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AMERICAN FORUM 
Speeches on Historic Issues, iySS-igoo 



AMERICAN 
FORUM 

Speeches on Historic Issues, ij 8 8 -1900 



EDITED BY 

ERNEST J. WRAGE 

Northwestern University 

BARNET BASKERVILLE 

University of Washington 



HARPER Sl BROTHERS, NEW YORK 



PS* 

. W7 



LA. 



American Forum: Speeches on Historic 

Issues, 1 788-1 goo 

Copyright © i960 by Ernest ]. Wrage and 

Barnet Baskerville 
Printed in the United States of America 

All rights in this hook are reserved. No part of the hook 
may he used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever 
without written permission except in the case of brief 
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For 
information address Harper & Brothers, 49 East ^rd 

Street, New York 16, NY. 

DK 



Library of Congress catalog card number: 60-yoig 

MAY 20 1960 



It is the peculiarity of some schools of eloquence that 
they embody and utter, not merely the individual genius 
and character of the speaker, hut a national consciousness 
—a national era, a mood, a hope, a dread, a despair— in 
which you listen to the spoken history of the time. 

— Rufus Choate 



PREFACE 



"American Forum" is a collection of representative speeches on many of the 
vital and urgent questions that were threshed over from the time of the 
ratification of the Constitution of the United States to the twentieth century. 
The speeches selected are of interest to students of history, government, 
literature, religion, speech— indeed to all readers who respond to the drama 
of lively exchange in ideas. For that is what this book is— a record of men and 
ideas jostling for public acceptance in the free competition of an American 
forum. 

Obviously these speeches were not devised to be preserved in an anthology. 
Each was delivered to a specific audience on a specific occasion for a specific 
purpose. The speakers were not making literature; they were making history. 
Patrick Henry fighting to keep his beloved Virginia from joining the pro- 
posed Federal government; William Ellery Channing stating publicly for the 
first time the Unitarian credo; William Graham Sumner stanchly upholding 
rugged individualism; Susan B. Anthony demanding equal rights for women 
—all were transacting public business, advancing important causes, energiz- 
ing significant ideas. And it is precisely because the attention of these speakers 
was fixed upon the job at hand, because in their utterances can be seen the 
clash of ideas, policies, and principles, that these real-life debates so vividly 
reflect the mood and temper of the times which called them forth and the 
scenes into which they were projected. 

Anthologies of speeches tend to follow one of two patterns, neither of 
which does full justice to the material. Older anthologies in particular were 
born in an era when appreciation for the pyrotechnics of oratory was high. 
Anthologists were keen for heart-pounding eloquence, and each specimen 
they exhibited was something of a tour de force. Anthologies in this tradition 
were advertised as containing masterpieces of eloquence. Their editors win- 
nowed out purple passages which they were sure would survive indefinitely 
as distinguished contributions to our national literature. Now that such 



Vlll PREFACE 

compositions are no longer highly regarded as literature they have been 
consigned to the same limbo as lace antimacassars and cast-iron deer. 

A second type of anthology attempts to select speeches alleged to have 
influenced the course of history. Such collections are generally more discrim- 
inating and more objective. They often contain many genuinely notable 
public addresses produced at moments of tension in history and acclaimed 
by those who heard them, speeches that have stood the test of time and that 
bear unmistakable marks of rhetorical excellence. Anthologies of this type 
have a worthy purpose, but they are too often mere miscellanies, collections 
of discrete items wrenched from their settings and arranged in chronological 
order, or assembled under a set of conventional headings such as "types of 
speech." Presented without adequate context or connecting links, these 
speeches are but surviving fragments of some obscure whole. Generations of 
schoolboys nourished on such a diet have memorized the exordium and 
peroration of Webster's "Second Reply to Hayne" without ever discovering 
the nature and significance of the reply or what it was a reply to. 

This volume is not a garland of rhetorical flowers, a mere miscellany of 
eloquent passages, although many of its speeches are profoundly eloquent. 
Nor is its purpose that of catering to an antiquarian's sentimental attachment 
to monumental speeches of the past, although many of the speeches are in- 
contestably great. Rather, we have selected and juxtaposed speeches in order 
to provide the substance and framework of an American forum as a venture 
in intellectual history through public address. We think this is a worthy 
enterprise for several reasons. 

i. Speech-making is important business in a free society. In the demo- 
cratic theory, each person is privileged to express himself on issues of concern 
to him and his contemporaries. Whether or not he succeeds in gaining a 
hearing depends upon his endowments for speaking and his ability to find 
or build a platform. In its history, the United States has provided an enor- 
mous number and variety of platforms, which its citizens have not been reluc- 
tant to mount. In short, public address is one of the primary means by which 
popular thought and action have always been developed and energized, 
sustained or modified. 

2. Although many important speeches of the past have been lost, the 
number of surviving texts is enormous. The main job of the anthologist is 
to winnow through extant speeches, choose those that illuminate the discus- 
sion of root issues in American life and thought, and then make them 
accessible. 

Reading speeches on critical issues brings us into direct encounter with 
competing schools of thought, with current assumptions, values, attitudes, 
and characteristic modes of address. Although a speech is primarily expressive 
of the mind of a speaker, it also is a gauge to the mind of his audience, 



PREFACE IX 

both listeners and readers. What speakers choose to talk about and what 
listeners choose to listen to are matters esteemed by both parties. In still 
other ways a speech bears the impress of an audience, always covertly, often 
overtly. Through intuition, experience, or by precept, effective public speak- 
ers discover they must take into account the interests, belief -systems, prej- 
udices, and caprices of their audiences. The adaptations speakers make are 
implicit in the formulations of their arguments, in idiomatic language, in 
images fashioned from life experiences of the group, and in appeals that go 
to the heart as well as to the head. In short, speeches on critical issues are 
vibrant with the immediacy of life, with the sense of interaction between 
speaker and listeners. 

3. If a speech is to be comprehended, interpreted, and evaluated, it must 
be placed within the context of its time. No speech completely transcends its 
time, and most speeches are inextricably interwoven with the moment. Ac- 
cordingly, and in broad outline, we have sketched the events and intellectual 
environment that constitute the backdrop for these speeches. Suggestions 
for acquiring additional background information may be found at the end 
of the volume. 

For these reasons, then, we have fashioned an anthology of speeches based 
on issues underlying the American experience. Preparing such a collection, 
however, poses this vexatious question: Which issues should be included? 
We have focused upon basic and persistent problems that commanded 
widespread public interest, provoked serious controversy, and continue di- 
rectly or indirectly to challenge us today. Hence we excluded evanescent 
excitements and concentrated upon fundamental constitutional, political, 
economic, social, and religious questions. If read successively, the speeches 
on these issues will reveal some of the major cleavages and continuities in 
American thought and action. 

These speeches have been drawn from many sources. We exhumed them 
from crumbling pamphlets, from yellowing newspapers, from legislative 
debates and hearings, and from journals. If finally we decided to include 
certain speeches that also appear in standard collections (e.g., Henry and 
Madison on ratification of the Constitution), it is because we have satisfied 
ourselves that they are the best statements available, and not because they 
have become established. In selecting the twenty-six speeches in American 
Forum we have rejected hundreds of others. Many of those omitted have been 
sacrificed only with the most painful reluctance. Each reader will doubtless 
look in vain for some old favorite which has fallen a casualty to the limitations 
of space, or did not conform to the plan of this volume. Such must inevitably 
be the case with any collection. The anthologist can do no more and no 
less than to make known his standards of selection and then to stand stead- 
fastly behind his choice. 



X PREFACE 

The speeches finally selected passed a number of tests. Each speech had 
to be the most cogent and economical statement of a position that we could 
find. Each had to be significantly relevant to one specific issue. Each had to 
deal in essentials of the specific problem, not in its tangential aspects. Each 
had to be representative of the case in behalf of one side or party to a 
controversy. Each had to be a representative expression of a foremost spokes- 
man from among accredited exponents of a position. Each had to convey to 
today's reader the authentic spirit of the occasion. 

How reliable are the texts used? Admittedly, texts of speeches are often 
open to question, particularly in matters of stylistic detail. Texts of early 
speeches suffer from the crude systems of stenography used in those days, 
and from limited reportorial service. In each case we have identified the 
source of the text used, and we have, of course, tried always to choose what 
we considered the most reliable text available. We have corrected typograph- 
ical errors and misspelled words. Here and there we took the liberty of 
modernizing archaic and eccentric punctuation when changes could be made 
without affecting meaning. 

We have been compelled by the prodigious length of some speeches, par- 
ticularly the earlier ones, to modify our original resolution to present only 
complete texts. Where we have found it necessary to cut a text, we have 
tried scrupulously to preserve its real substance. We have cut remarks of 
local reference that lend nothing to the thought and distract today's reader. 
We have eliminated a few long and superfluous prefatory statements. We 
have cut extended amplifications of a point, or disgressions from the main 
line of argument. In short, we have tried to retain important substantive 
matters and eliminate "detachable" elements whenever it was impossible to 
reproduce a text in toto. All omissions, however minor, are clearly indicated 
by ellipses. Where transitions were needed, explanatory notes have been 
provided. 

American Forum, then, is made up of twenty-six speeches, arranged chron- 
ologically in relation to basic historical issues. A short introduction to each 
issue and the speeches related to it supplies historical context. A brief 
chronology of life facts identifies each of the speakers. The bibliographical 
notes at the end of the book open opportunities for further study. This 
volume constitutes, we believe, a lively chronicle of ideas in action, to be 
read with profit and enjoyment for its own sake, or as a source book in the 
history of American public address from 1788 to 1906. A second volume, 
following a similar format and featuring twentieth-century speeches, will be 
published subsequently by Harper & Brothers. 



CONTENTS 



Preface vii 
Part I. To Form a More Perfect Union 

RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 3 

Patrick henry Against the Federal Constitution 7 

james madison For the Federal Constitution 23 

THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 33 

david daggett Sun-Beams May Be Extracted from Cucumbers, 

But the Process Is Tedious 37 

thomas jefferson First Inaugural Address 50 

daniel webster Basis of the Senate 54 
george Bancroft The Office of the People in Art, Government, 

and Religion 65 

RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 75 

William ellery channing Unitarian Christianity 82 

lyman beecher The Faith Once Delivered to the Saints 99 

THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 114 

john caldwell calhoun The Compact Theory of the 

Constitution 120 
daniel webster The Constitution Not a Compact Between 

Sovereign States 133 
xi 



Xll CONTENTS 

A HOUSE DIVIDED 150 

Robert toombs Slavery in the United States: Its Consistency 
with Republican Institutions and Its Effect 

upon the Slave and Society 1 58 

William lloyd garrison No Compromise with Slavery 169 

Abraham Lincoln A House Divided 180 

Stephen A. douglas Popular Sovereignty 188 

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FEDERAL UNION 198 

THADDEus stevens Radical Republican Theory 204 

henry jarvis Raymond Administration Theory 213 

Part II. Ferment in an Industrial Age 

RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 223 

William graham sumner The Forgotten Man 229 

henry george The Crime of Poverty 244 

THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 256 

russell herman conwell Acres of Diamonds 263 
george davis herron The Message of Jesus to Men of Wealth 276 

REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 283 

t. DEwiTT talmage Victory for God 289 

robert green ingersoll Victory for Man 301 

CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 313 

susan brownell Anthony For the Woman Suffrage 

Amendment 3 1 8 
Joseph emerson brown Against the Woman Suffrage 

Amendment 333 

THE MISSION OF AMERICA 343 

albert j. beveridge The March of the Flag 352 

William jennings bryan Imperialism 358 

Notes on Sources and Supplementary Reading 371 






PART ONE 



To Form a More Perfect Union 



RATIFICATION OF THE 
FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 



The deliberations leading to the ratification of the 
newly drawn Federal Constitution by the various state 
conventions constitute some of the most significant and 
dramatic debates in American history. In September of 
ij8j the Constitutional Convention finished its work 
and the proposed plan of government was transmitted 
by Congress to the states for approval. By January of 
the following year five states had ratified the document: 
Delaware, New jersey, and Georgia by unanimous vote; 
Connecticut and Pennsylvania by substantial majorities. 
The following month the Massachusetts convention, after 
bitter debate, voted for ratification by the slender margin 
of 187 to 168, and proposed a series of amendments, thus 
setting a precedent which was followed by states sub- 
sequently ratifying. During the spring and summer of 
1788 Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Vir- 
ginia, and New York voted to support the new govern- 
ment, the latter state by a margin of only three votes. 
In September, after a year of the widest, and in some 
quarters the most intense, public discussion throughout 
the Confederation, Congress voted to put the Constitu- 
tion into operation. 

The debates in the different states are unequally re- 
ported, and the accuracy of the reports is open to question. 
Little record remains of the proceedings of the New 
Hampshire convention; those of Virginia and New York 



RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

are preserved in some detail. Judging from such reports 
as are available, it appears that the same general argu- 
ments were presented for and against the Constitution 
in most of the state conventions. The Federalists pointed 
to the weakness and general inadequacy of the Articles 
of Confederation and argued that the new government 
would provide much-needed order and security. The 
Antifederalists were primarily concerned about the loss 
of personal liberties and states' rights; the proposed or- 
ganization, they were convinced, would be too strong 
and too remote. 

In no state were both Federalist and Antifederalist 
cases presented with more clarity and competence than 
in the key state of Virginia. Here the antagonists were 
evenly matched, and the provisions of the new federal 
organization were carefully analyzed and ably discussed 
by friend and foe alike. When the Virginia delegates 
assembled on the second day of June, 1788, eight states 
had already ratified, and it appeared that the fate of the 
Constitution might be settled by the Richmond con- 
vention. Even when New Hampshire on June 21 became 
the ninth state to ratify, the importance of Virginias 
decision was in no way lessened, since without her and 
without New York, the new government would have 
small hope of success. Virginia was the most populous, 
and in many ways the most important state in the Con- 
federation, and Federalists elsewhere were anxiously 
awaiting the outcome of her deliberations. Alexander 
Hamilton, as leader of the New York Federalists, wrote 
to James Madison in Richmond that "Our chance of 
success depends on you." 

The two speeches presented below were delivered 
during the opening days of the Virginia convention. 
They include many of the principal arguments for and 
against adoption of the Constitution, and although im- 
perfectly reported, suggest the contrast in personality, 



RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

style, and method between the two speakers. Henry 
begins with a reference to his brief remarks of the pre- 
ceding day in which he had questioned the authority of 
the framers of the Constitution to use the language of 
"We, the people' instead of "We, the states." The basic 
change in the nature of the government implied in this 
phraseology would, he believes, render all liberties in- 
secure. Liberty, he insists, and not world power or in- 
creased trade, should be the direct end of government. 
Henry then sets forth at length and with considerable 
repetition his objections to the new Federal government 
as opposed to a loose confederation of states. He offers 
in conclusion the suggestion that Virginia consider the 
possibility of remaining outside the Union, that she 
"stand by a while, and see the effect of its [the Consti- 
tution's] adoption in other states." As reported, the speech 
is personal and colloquial. Its loose organization and 
general diffuseness are acknowledged in Henry's own 
statement that he has found his mind hurried on from 
subject to subject. He did not, he says, "come prepared 
to speak, on so multifarious a subject, in so general a 
manner." 

The tone of Madison's reply is calmer and less emo- 
tional. He seems at times to be smiling condescendingly 
at Henry's vehement protest of the preceding day. His 
introduction is a plea for the avoidance of appeals to the 
passions and a judicious examination of the Constitution 
solely on its own merits. Madison's charge that Henry 
spoke too vaguely and generally of the dangers inherent 
in the Constitution is unfair. Henry's enumeration of 
these dangers was quite specific, as Madison's own ex- 
cellent point by point refutation of them indicates. Madi- 
son concludes his carefully constructed rebuttal with 
some remarks as to his conception of the general nature 
of the proposed government. It is, he points out, un- 
precedented in form, being "of a mixed nature," in some 



RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

respects "federal" (i.e., confederated'), in others "con- 
solidated." It avoids the evils of absolute consolidation 
and of mere confederation, and combines the assets of 
both. 

Eloquent and memorable as were the debates them- 
selves, the skillful management of the convention had 
much to do with determining the final outcome. The 
Federalists were particularly adept at political strategy 
and parliamentary tactics, and in view of the even match- 
ing of the disputants, it is possible that superior general- 
ship may have accounted in large measure for the 
ultimate triumph of their cause. The Virginia convention 
ratified the Constitution ]une 25, 1788, by a vote of 89 
to 79. Meanwhile, a similar battle had been raging in 
the New York convention between the Federalists under 
Alexander Hamilton and the Antifederalists led by 
Governor Clinton and Melancton Smith, where the news 
of Virginias decision may have exerted some influence 
upon the final vote of 30 to 27 in favor of ratification. 



Against the Federal Constitution 
PATRICK HENRY 



Born, Hanover County, Virginia, May 29, 1736; died, 
Charlotte County, Virginia, June 6, 1799. Won fame as 
an orator in celebrated "Parsons' Cause," 1763. Elected 
to House of Burgesses, 176$; author of "Virginia Resolu- 
tions" denouncing Stamp Act. Delegate to Continental 
Congress, 1774 and 1775, and in 177s t0 sec ond revo- 
lutionary convention of Virginia where he delivered his 
"Liberty or Death" speech. Governor of Virginia, 1776- 
1779, and again 1784-1786. Delegate to Philadelphia 
Constitutional Convention of 1787, but declined to serve; 
later led opposition to ratification in Virginia. Declined a 
succession of offices, among them United States Senator, 
Secretary of State, and Chief Justice of United States 
Supreme Court. 



M 



r. Chairman: I am much obliged to the very worthy 
gentleman for his encomium. I wish I was possessed 
with talents, or possessed of any thing that might enable me to elucidate this 
great subject. I am not free from suspicion : I am apt to entertain doubts. I rose 
yesterday to ask a question which arose in my own mind. When I asked that 
question, I thought the meaning of my interrogation was obvious. The fate of 
this question and of America may depend on this. Have they said, We, the 
states? Have they made a proposal of a compact between states? If they had, 
this would be a confederation. It is otherwise most clearly a consolidated 
government. The question turns, sir, on that poor little thing— the expression, 

Virginia Ratifying Convention, Richmond, June 5, 1788. Jonathan Elliot, ed., 
The Debates in the Several State Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Con- 
stitution, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: J, B. Lippincott Company, 1901), III, pp. 43-64. 



8 RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

We, the people, instead of the states, of America. I need not take much pains 
to show that the principles of this system are extremely pernicious, impolitic, 
and dangerous. Is this a monarchy, like England— a compact between prince 
and people, with checks on the former to secure the liberty of the latter? 
Is this a confederacy, like Holland— an association of a number of independent 
states, each of which retains its individual sovereignty? It is not a democracy, 
wherein the people retain all their rights securely. Had these principles 
been adhered to, we should not have been brought to this alarming transition, 
from a confederacy to a consolidated government. We have no detail of these 
great considerations, which, in my opinion, ought to have abounded before 
we should recur to a government of this kind. Here is a resolution as radical 
as that which separated us from Great Britain. It is radical in this transition; 
our rights and privileges are endangered, and the sovereignty of the states 
will be relinquished: and cannot we plainly see that this is actually the case? 
The rights of conscience, trial by jury, liberty of the press, all your im- 
munities and franchises, all pretensions to human rights and privileges, are 
rendered insecure, if not lost, by this change, so loudly talked of by some, and 
inconsiderately by others. Is this tame relinquishment of rights worthy of 
freemen? Is it worthy of that manly fortitude that ought to characterize 
republicans? It is said eight states have adopted this plan. I declare that if 
twelve states and a half had adopted it, I would, with manly firmness, and 
in spite of an erring world, reject it. You are not to inquire how your trade 
may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, 
but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end 
of your government. 

Having premised these things, I shall, with the aid of my judgment and 
information, which, I confess, are not extensive, go into the discussion of this 
system more minutely. Is it necessary for your liberty that you should 
abandon those great rights by the adoption of this system? Is the relinquish- 
ment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your 
liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security 
of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings— give us that 
precious jewel, and you may take every thing else! But I am fearful I have 
lived long enough to become an old-fashioned fellow. Perhaps an invincible 
attachment to the dearest rights of man may, in these refined, enlightened 
days, be deemed old-fashioned; if so, I am contented to be so. I say, the time 
has been when every pulse of my heart beat for American liberty, and 
which, I believe, had a counterpart in the breast of every true American; 
but suspicions have gone forth— suspicions of my integrity— publicly reported 
that my professions are not real. Twenty-three years ago was I supposed 
a traitor to my country? I was then said to be the bane of sedition, because 
I supported the rights of my country. I may be thought suspicious when I say 



PATRICK HENRY 9 

our privileges and rights are in danger. But, sir, a number of the people of 
this country are weak enough to think these things are too true. I am happy 
to find that the gentleman on the other side declares they are groundless. 
But, sir, suspicion is a virtue as long as its object is the preservation of the 
public good, and as long as it stays within proper bounds: should it fall on 
me, I am contented: conscious rectitude is a powerful consolation. I trust 
there are many who think my professions for the public good to be real. 
Let your suspicion look to both sides. There are many on the other side, 
who possibly may have been persuaded to the necessity of these measures, 
which I conceive to be dangerous to your liberty. Guard with jealous atten- 
tion the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. 
Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever 
you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined. I am answered by gentle- 
men, that, though I might speak of terrors, yet the fact was, that we were 
surrounded by none of the dangers I apprehended. I conceive this new 
government to be one of those dangers: it has produced those horrors which 
distress many of our best citizens. We are come hither to preserve the poor 
commonwealth of Virginia, if it can be possibly done: something must be 
done to preserve your liberty and mine. The Confederation, this same 
despised government, merits, in my opinion, the highest encomium: it car- 
ried us through a long and dangerous war; it rendered us victorious in that 
bloody conflict with a powerful nation; it has secured us a territory greater 
than any European monarch possesses: and shall a government which has 
been thus strong and vigorous, be accused of imbecility, and abandoned 
for want of energy? Consider what you are about to do before you part with 
the government. Take longer time in reckoning things; revolutions like 
this have happened in almost every country in Europe; similar examples are 
to be found in ancient Greece and ancient Rome— instances of the people 
losing their liberty by their own carelessness and the ambition of a few. We 
are cautioned by the honorable gentleman, who presides, against faction 
and turbulence. I acknowledge that licentiousness is dangerous, and that 
it ought to be provided against: I acknowledge, also, the new form of 
government may effectually prevent it: yet there is another thing it will 
as effectually do— it will oppress and ruin the people. 

There are sufficient guards placed against sedition and licentiousness; for, 
when power is given to this government to suppress these, or for any other 
purpose, the language it assumes is clear, express, and unequivocal; but 
when this Constitution speaks of privileges, there is an ambiguity, sir, a fatal 
ambiguity— an ambiguity which is very astonishing. In the clause under 
consideration, there is the strangest language that I can conceive. I mean, 
when it says that there shall not be more representatives than one for 
every thirty thousand. Now, sir, how easy is it to evade this privilege! "The 



IO RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

number shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand." This may be 
satisfied by one representative from each state. Let our numbers be ever 
so great, this immense continent may, by this artful expression, be reduced 
to have but thirteen representatives. I confess this construction is not natural; 
but the ambiguity of the expression lays a good ground for a quarrel. Why 
was it not clearly and unequivocally expressed, that they should be entitled 
to have one for every thirty thousand? This would have obviated all disputes; 
and was this difficult to be done? What is the inference? When population 
increases, and a state shall send representatives in this proportion, Congress 
may remand them, because the right of having one for every thirty thousand 
is not clearly expressed. This possibility of reducing the number to one for 
each state approximates to probability by that other expression— "but each 
state shall at least have one representative." Now, is it not clear that, from 
the first expression, the number might be reduced so much that some states 
should have no representatives at all, were it not for the insertion of this 
last expression? And as this is the only restriction upon them, we may fairly 
conclude that they may restrain the number to one from each state. Perhaps 
the same horrors may hang over my mind again. I shall be told I am con- 
tinually afraid: but, sir, I have strong cause of apprehension. In some parts 
of the plan before you, the great rights of freemen are endangered; in other 
parts, absolutely taken away. How does your trial by jury stand? In civil 
cases gone— not sufficiently secured in criminal— this best privilege is gone. 
But we are told that we need not fear; because those in power, being our 
representatives, will not abuse the powers we put in their hands. I am 
not well versed in history, but I will submit to your recollection, whether 
liberty has been destroyed most often by the licentiousness of the people, 
or by the tyranny of rulers. I imagine, sir, you will find the balance on the 
side of tyranny. Happy will you be if you miss the fate of those nations, 
who, omitting to resist their oppressors, or negligently suffering their liberty 
to be wrested from them, have groaned under intolerable despotism! Most 
of the human race are now in this deplorable condition; and those nations 
who have gone in search of grandeur, power, and splendor, have also fallen 
a sacrifice, and been the victims of their own folly. While they acquired those 
visionary blessings, they lost their freedom. My great objection to this gov- 
ernment is, that it does not leave us the means of defending our rights, 
or of waging war against tyrants. It is urged by some gentlemen, that this 
new plan will bring us an acquisition of strength— an army, and the militia 
of the states. This is an idea extremely ridiculous; gentlemen cannot be 
in earnest. This acquisition will trample on our fallen liberty. Let my beloved 
Americans guard against that fatal lethargy that has pervaded the universe. 
Have we the means of resisting disciplined armies, when our only defence, 
the militia, is put into the hands of Congress? 



PATRICK HENRY II 

The honorable gentleman said that great danger would ensue if the Con- 
vention rose without adopting this system. I ask, Where is that danger? I 
see none. Other gentlemen have told us, within these walls, that the 
union is gone, or that the union will be gone. Is not this trifling with the 
judgment of their fellow-citizens? Till they tell us the grounds of their fears, 
I will consider them as imaginary. I rose to make inquiry where those dangers 
were; they could make no answer: I believe I never shall have that 
answer. Is there a disposition in the people of this country to revolt against 
the dominion of laws? Has there been a single tumult in Virginia? Have 
not the people of Virginia, when laboring under the severest pressure of 
accumulated distresses, manifested the most cordial acquiescence in the 
execution of the laws? What could be more awful than their unanimous 
acquiescence under general distresses? Is there any revolution in Virginia? 
Whither is the spirit of America gone? Whither is the genius of America 
fled? It was but yesterday, when our enemies marched in triumph through 
our country. Yet the people of this country could not be appalled by their 
pompous armaments: they stopped their career, and victoriously captured 
them. Where is the peril, now, compared to that? Some minds are agitated 
by foreign alarms. Happily for us, there is no real danger from Europe; that 
country is engaged in more arduous business: from that quarter there is 
no cause of fear: you may sleep in safety forever for them. 

Where is the danger? If, sir, there was any, I would recur to the American 
spirit to defend us; that spirit which has enabled us to surmount the greatest 
difficulties: to that illustrious spirit I address my most fervent prayer to 
prevent our adopting a system destructive to liberty. Let not gentlemen be 
told that it is not safe to reject this government. Wherefore is it not safe? 
We are told there are dangers, but those dangers are ideal; they cannot be 
demonstrated. To encourage us to adopt it, they tell us that there is a plain, 
easy way of getting amendments. When I come to contemplate this part, 
I suppose that I am mad, or that my countrymen are so. The way to amend- 
ment is, in my conception, shut. Let us consider this plain, easy way. "The 
Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall 
propose amendments to this Constitution, or on the application of the 
legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a Convention for 
proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents 
and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures 
of three fourths of the several states, or by the Conventions in three fourths 
thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by 
the Congress. . . ." 

Hence it appears that three fourths of the states must ultimately agree 
to any amendments that may be necessary. Let us consider the consequence 
of this. However uncharitable it may appear, yet I must tell my opinion— 



12 RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

that the most unworthy characters may get into power, and prevent the 
introduction of amendments. Let us suppose— for the case is supposable, 
possible, and probable— that you happen to deal those powers to unworthy 
hands; will they relinquish powers already in their possession, or agree to 
amendments? Two thirds of the Congress, or of the state legislatures, are 
necessary even to propose amendments. If one third of these be unworthy 
men, they may prevent the application for amendments; but what is de- 
structive and mischievous, is, that three fourths of the state legislatures, 
or of the state conventions, must concur in the amendments when proposed! 
In such numerous bodies, there must necessarily be some designing, bad 
men. To suppose that so large a number as three fourths of the states will 
concur, is to suppose that they will possess genius, intelligence, and integrity, 
approaching to miraculous. It would indeed be miraculous that they should 
concur in the same amendments, or even in such as would bear some likeness 
to one another; for four of the smallest states, that do not collectively con- 
tain one tenth part of the population of the United States, may obstruct the 
most salutary and necessary amendments. Nay, in these four states, six 
tenths of the people may reject these amendments; and suppose that 
amendments shall be opposed to amendments, which is highly probable,— 
is it possible that three fourths can ever agree to the same amendments? 
A bare majority in these four small states may hinder the adoption of 
amendments; so that we may fairly and justly conclude that one twentieth 
part of the American people may prevent the removal of the most grievous 
inconveniences and oppression, by refusing to accede to amendments. A 
trifling minority may reject the most salutary amendments. Is this an easy 
mode of securing the public liberty? It is, sir, a most fearful situation, when 
the most contemptible minority can prevent the alteration of the most op- 
pressive government; for it may, in many respects, prove to be such. Is this 
the spirit of republicanism? 

What, sir, is the genius of democracy? Let me read that clause of the bill 
of rights of Virginia which relates to this: 3d clause:— that government is, or 
ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the 
people, nation, or community. Of all the various modes and forms of govern- 
ment, that is best, which is capable of producing the greatest degree of 
happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of 
mal-administration; and that whenever any government shall be found inade- 
quate, or contrary to those purposes, a majority of the community hath an 
indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, 
in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal. 

This, sir, is the language of democracy— that a majority of the community 
have a right to alter government when found to be oppressive. But how 
different is the genius of your new Constitution from this! How different 



PATRICK HENRY 13 

from the sentiments of freemen, that a contemptible minority can prevent 
the good of the majority! 



Let me here call your attention to that part which gives the Congress 
power "to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and 
for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the 
United States— reserving to the states, respectively, the appointment of the 
officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline 
prescribed by Congress." By this, sir, you see that their control over our 
last and best defence is unlimited. If they neglect or refuse to discipline 
or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither— this 
power being exclusively given to Congress. The power of appointing officers 
over men not disciplined or armed is ridiculous; so that this pretended little 
remains of power left to the states may, at the pleasure of Congress, be 
rendered nugatory. Our situation will be deplorable indeed: nor can we 
ever expect to get this government amended, since I have already shown that 
a very small minority may prevent it, and that small minority interested in 
the continuance of the oppression. Will the oppressor let go the oppressed? 
Was there ever an instance? Can the annals of mankind exhibit one single 
example where rulers overcharged with power willingly let go the oppressed, 
though solicited and requested most earnestly? The application for amend- 
ments will therefore be fruitless. Sometimes, the oppressed have got loose 
by one of those bloody struggles that desolate a country; but a willing 
relinquishment of power is one of those things which human nature never 
was, nor ever will be, capable of. 

The honorable gentleman's observations, respecting the people's right 
of being the agents in the formation of this government, are not accurate, 
in my humble conception. The distinction between a national government 
and a confederacy is not sufficiently discerned. Had the delegates, who were 
sent to Philadelphia, a power to propose a consolidated government instead 
of a confederacy? Were they not deputed by states, and not by the people? 
The assent of the people, in their collective capacity, is not necessary to the 
formation of a federal government. The people have no right to enter into 
leagues, alliances, or confederations; they are not the proper agents for this 
purpose. States and foreign powers are the only proper agents for this kind 
of govenment. Show me an instance where the people have exercised this 
business. Has it not always gone through the legislatures? I refer you to the 
treaties with France, Holland, and other nations. How were they made? 
Were they not made by the states? Are the people, therefore, in their 
aggregate capacity, the proper persons to form a confederacy? This, therefore, 
ought to depend on the consent of the legislatures, the people having never 



14 RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

sent delegates to make any proposition for changing the government. Yet 
I must say, at the same time, that it was made on grounds the most pure; 
and perhaps I might have been brought to consent to it so far as to the 
change of government. But there is one thing in it which I never would 
acquiesce in. I mean, the changing it into a consolidated government, which 
is so abhorrent to my mind. . . . 

If we admit this consolidated govenment, it will be because we like a 
great, splendid one. Some way or other we must be a great and mighty 
empire; we must have an army, and a navy, and a number of things. When 
the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: 
liberty, sir, was then the primary object. We are descended from a people 
whose government was founded on liberty: our glorious forefathers of Great 
Britain made liberty the foundation of every thing. That country is become 
a great, mighty, and splendid nation; not because their government is 
strong and energetic, but, sir, because liberty is its direct end and founda- 
tion. We drew the spirit of liberty from our British ancestors: by that spirit 
we have triumphed over every difficulty. But now, sir, the American spirit, 
assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation, is about to convert this 
country into a powerful and mighty empire. If you make the citizens of 
this country agree to become the subjects of one great consolidated empire 
of America, your government will not have sufficient energy to keep them 
together. Such a government is incompatible with the genius of republicanism. 
There will be no checks, no real balances, in this government. What can 
avail your specious, imaginary balances, your rope-dancing, chain-rattling, 
ridiculous ideal checks and contrivances? But, sir, we are not feared by 
foreigners; we do not make nations tremble. Would this constitute happiness, 
or secure liberty? I trust, sir, our political hemisphere will ever direct their 
operations to the security of those objects. . . . 

When I thus profess myself an advocate for the liberty of the people, I 
shall be told I am a designing man, that I am to be a great man, that I am 
to be a demagogue; and many similar illiberal insinuations will be thrown 
out: but, sir, conscious rectitude outweighs those things with me. I see 
great jeopardy in this new government. I see none from our present one. 
I hope some gentleman or other will bring forth, in full array, those dangers, 
if there be any, that we may see and touch them. 

I have said that I thought this a consolidated government: I will now 
prove it. Will the great rights of the people be secured by this government? 
Suppose it should prove oppressive, how can it be altered? Our bill of rights 
declares, "that a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, 
and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall 
be judged most conducive to the public weal/' 

I have just proved that one tenth, or less, of the people of America— a most 



PATRICK HENRY 1 5 

despicable minority— may prevent this reform or alteration. Suppose the people 
of Virginia should wish to alter their government; can a majority of them do it? 
No; because they are connected with other men, or, in other words, consoli- 
dated with other states. When the people of Virginia, at a future day, shall 
wish to alter their government, though they should be unanimous in this de- 
sire, yet they may be prevented therefrom by a despicable minority at the ex- 
tremity of the United States. The founders of your own Constitution made 
your government changeable: but the power of changing it is gone from 
you. Whither is it gone? It is placed in the same hands that hold the rights 
of twelve other states; and those who hold those rights have right and 
power to keep them. It is not the particular government of Virginia: one 
of the leading features of that government is, that a majority can alter it, 
when necessary for the public good. This government is not a Virginian, 
but an American government. Is it not, therefore, a consolidated govern- 
ment? The sixth clause of your bill of rights tells you, "that elections of 
members to serve as representatives of the people in Assembly ought to be 
free, and that all men having sufficient evidence of permanent common 
interest with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage, 
and cannot be taxed, or deprived of their property for public uses, without 
their own consent, or that of their representatives so elected, nor bound by 
any law to which they have not in like manner assented for the public 
good." But what does this Constitution say? The clause under consideration 
gives an unlimited and unbounded power of taxation. Suppose every delegate 
from Virginia opposes a law laying a tax; what will it avail? They are op- 
posed by a majority; eleven members can destroy their efforts: those feeble 
ten cannot prevent the passing the most oppressive tax law; so that, in direct 
opposition to the spirit and express language of your declaration of rights, 
you are taxed, not by your own consent, but by people who have no connec- 
tion with you. 

The next clause of the bill of rights tells you, "that all power of suspending 
law, or the execution of laws, by any authority, without the consent of the 
representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights, and ought not to 
be exercised." This tells us that there can be no suspension of government 
or laws without our own consent; yet this Constitution can counteract 
and suspend any of our laws that contravene its oppressive operation; for 
they have the power of direct taxation, which suspends our bill of rights; 
and it is expressly provided that they can make all laws necessary for carrying 
their powers into execution; and it is declared paramount to the laws and 
constitutions of the states. Consider how the only remaining defence we 
have left is destroyed in this manner. Besides the expenses of maintaining 
the Senate and other house in as much splendor as they please, there is to 
be a great and mighty President, with very extensive powers— the powers of 



1 6 RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

a king. He is to be supported in extravagant magnificence; so that the whole 
of our property may be taken by this American government, by laying what 
taxes they please, giving themselves what salaries they please, and suspending 
our laws at their pleasure. I might be thought too inquisitive, but I believe 
I should take up very little of your time in enumerating the little power 
that is left to the government of Virginia; for this power is reduced to 
little or nothing: their garrisons, magazines, arsenals, and forts, which will 
be situated in the strongest places within the states; their ten miles square, 
with all the fine ornaments of human life, added to their powers, and taken 
from the states, will reduce the power of the latter to nothing. 

The voice of tradition, I trust, will inform posterity of our struggles for 
freedom. If our descendants be worthy the name of Americans, they will 
preserve, and hand down to their latest posterity, the transactions of the 
present times; and, though I confess my exclamations are not worthy the 
hearing, they will see that I have done my utmost to preserve their liberty; 
for I never will give up the power of direct taxation but for a scourge. I am 
willing to give it conditionally; that is, after non-compliance with requisitions. 
I will do more, sir, and what I hope will convince the most skeptical man 
that I am a lover of the American Union— that, in case Virginia shall not 
make punctual payment, the control of our custom-houses, and the whole 
regulation of trade, shall be given to Congress, and that Virginia shall depend 
on Congress even for passports, till Virginia shall have paid the last farthing, 
and furnished the last soldier. Nay, sir, there is another alternative to which 
I would consent;— even that they should strike us out of the Union, and take 
away from us all federal privileges, till we comply with federal requisitions: 
but let it depend upon our own pleasure to pay our money in the most easy 
manner for our people. Were all the states, more terrible than the mother 
country, to join against us, I hope Virginia could defend herself; but, sir, 
the dissolution of the Union is most abhorrent to my mind. The first thing 
I have at heart is American liberty: the second thing is American union; and 
I hope the people of Virginia will endeavor to preserve that union. The 
increasing population of the Southern States is far greater than that of New 
England; consequently, in a short time, they will be far more numerous than 
the people of that country. Consider this, and you will find this state more 
particularly interested to support American liberty, and not bind our posterity 
by an improvident relinquishment of our rights. I would give the best 
security for a punctual compliance with requisitions; but I beseech gentle- 
men, at all hazards, not to give up this unlimited power of taxation. The 
honorable gentleman has told us that these powers, given to Congress, are 
accompanied by a judiciary which will correct all. On examination, you will 
find this very judiciary oppressively constructed; your jury trial destroyed, 
and the judges dependent on Congress. 



PATRICK HENRY 1 7 

In this scheme of energetic government, the people will find two sets of 
tax-gatherers— the state and the federal sheriffs. This, it seems to me, will 
produce such dreadful oppression as the people cannot possibly bear. The 
federal sheriff may commit what oppression, make what distresses, he 
pleases, and ruin you with impunity; for how are you to tie his hands? 
Have you any sufficiently decided means of preventing him from sucking 
your blood by speculations, commissions, and fees? Thus thousands of your 
people will be most shamefully robbed: our state sheriffs, those unfeeling 
bloodsuckers, have, under the watchful eye of our legislature, committed 
the most horrid and barbarous ravages on our people. It has required the 
most constant vigilance of the legislature to keep them from totally ruining 
the people; a repeated succession of laws has been made to suppress their 
iniquitous speculations and cruel extortions; and as often has their nefarious 
ingenuity devised methods of evading the force of those laws: in the struggle 
they have generally triumphed over the legislature. 

It is a fact that lands have been sold for five shillings, which were worth 
one hundred pounds: if sheriffs, thus immediately under the eye of our 
state legislature and judiciary, have dared to commit these outrages, what 
would they not have done if their masters had been at Philadelphia or 
New York? If they perpetrate the most unwarrantable outrage on your 
person or property, you cannot get redress on this side of Philadelphia or 
New York; and how can you get it there? If your domestic avocations could 
permit you to go thither, there you must appeal to judges sworn to support 
this Constitution, in opposition to that of any state, and who may also be 
inclined to favor their own officers. When these harpies are aided by excise- 
men, who may search, at any time, your houses, and most secret recesses, will 
the people bear it? If you think so, you differ from me. Where I thought 
there was a possibility of such mischiefs, I would grant power with a nig- 
gardly hand; and here there is a strong probability that these oppressions 
shall actually happen. I may be told that it is safe to err on that side, because 
such regulations may be made by Congress as shall restrain these officers, 
and because laws are made by our representatives, and judged by righteous 
judges: but, sir, as these regulations may be made, so they may not; and 
many reasons there are to induce a belief that they will not. I shall therefore 
be an infidel on that point till the day of my death. 

This Constitution is said to have beautiful features; but when I come 
to examine these features, sir, they appear to me horribly frightful. Among 
other deformities, it has an awful squinting; it squints towards monarchy; 
and does not this raise indignation in the breast of every true American? 

Your President may easily become king. Your Senate is so imperfectly 
constructed that your dearest rights may be sacrificed by what may be a 
small minority; and a very small minority may continue forever unchangeably 



1 8 RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

this government, although horridly defective. Where are your checks in 
this government? Your strongholds will be in the hands of your enemies. 
It is on a supposition that your American governors shall be honest, that 
all the good qualities of this government are founded; but its defective and 
imperfect construction puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of 
mischiefs, should they be bad men; and, sir, would not all the world, from 
the eastern to the western hemisphere, blame our distracted folly in resting 
our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad? Show me 
that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed 
on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent 
loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, 
with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt. 

If your American chief be a man of ambition and abilities, how easy is it 
for him to render himself absolute! The army is in his hands, and if he be 
a man of address, it will be attached to him, and it will be the subject of long 
meditation with him to seize the first auspicious moment to accomplish 
his design; and, sir, will the American spirit solely relieve you when this 
happens? I would rather infinitely— and I am sure most of this Convention 
are of the same opinion— have a king, lords, and commons, than a govern- 
ment so replete with such insupportable evils. If we make a king, we may 
prescribe the rules by which he shall rule his people, and interpose such 
checks as shall prevent him from infringing them; but the President, in the 
field, at the head of his army, can prescribe the terms on which he shall 
reign master, so far that it will puzzle any American ever to get his neck 
from under the galling yoke. I cannot with patience think of this idea. If 
ever he violates the laws, one of two things will happen: he will come at 
the head of his army, to carry every thing before him; or he will give bail, 
or do what Mr. Chief Justice will order him. If he be guilty, will not the 
recollection of his crimes teach him to make one bold push for the American 
throne? Will not the immense difference between being master of every 
thing, and being ignominiously tried and punished, powerfully excite him 
to make this bold push? But, sir, where is the existing force to punish him? 
Can he not, at the head of his army, beat down every opposition? Away 
with your President! we shall have a king : the army will salute him monarch : 
your militia will leave you, and assist in making him king, and fight against 
you: and what have you to oppose this force? What will then become of 
you and your rights? Will not absolute despotism ensue? . . . 

What can be more defective than the clause concerning the elections? 
The control given to Congress over the time, place, and manner of holding 
elections, will totally destroy the end of suffrage. The elections may be held 
at one place, and the most inconvenient in the state; or they may be at 
remote distances from those who have a right of suffrage: hence nine out of 



PATRICK HENRY 1 9 

ten must either not vote at all, or vote for strangers; for the most influential 
characters will be applied to, to know who are the most proper to be chosen. 
I repeat, that the control of Congress over the manner, &c, of electing, well 
warrants this idea. The natural consequence will be, that this democratic 
branch will possess none of the public confidence; the people will be preju- 
diced against representatives chosen in such an injudicious manner. The 
proceedings in the northern conclave will be hidden from the yeomanry of 
this country. We are told that the yeas and nays shall be taken, and entered 
on the journals. This, sir, will avail nothing: it may be locked up in their 
chests, and concealed forever from the people; for they are not to publish 
what parts they think require secrecy: they may think, and will think, the 
whole requires it. 

Another beautiful feature of this Constitution is, the publication from 
time to time of the receipts and expenditures of the public money. This 
expression, from time to time, is very indefinite and indeterminate: it may 
extend to a century. Grant that any of them are wicked; they may squander 
the public money so as to ruin you, and yet this expression will give you 
no redress. I say they may ruin you; for where, sir, is the responsibility? 
The yeas and nays will show you nothing, unless they be fools as well as 
knaves; for, after having wickedly trampled on the rights of the people, they 
would act like fools indeed, were they to publish and divulge their iniquity, 
when they have it equally in their power to suppress and conceal it. Where 
is the responsibility— that leading principle in the British government? In 
that government, a punishment certain and inevitable is provided; but in 
this, there is no real, actual punishment for the grossest mal-administration. 
They may go without punishment, though they commit the most outrageous 
violation on our immunities. That paper may tell me they will be punished. 
I ask, By what law? They must make the law, for there is no existing law 
to do it. What! will they make a law to punish themselves? 

This, sir, is my great objection to the Constitution, that there is no true 
responsibility— and that the preservation of our liberty depends on the single 
chance of men being virtuous enough to make laws to punish themselves. 

In the country from which we are descended, they have real and not 
imaginary responsibility; for their mal-administration has cost their heads 
to some of the most saucy geniuses that ever were. The Senate, by making 
treaties, may destroy your liberty and laws for want of responsibility. Two 
thirds of those that shall happen to be present, can, with the President, 
make treaties that shall be the supreme law of the land; they may make 
the most ruinous treaties; and yet there is no punishment for them. Whoever 
shows me a punishment provided for them will oblige me. So, sir, not- 
withstanding there are eight pillars, they want another. Where will they 
make another? I trust, sir, the exclusion of the evils wherewith this system is 



20 RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

replete in its present form, will be made a condition precedent to its adoption 
by this or any other state. The transition, from a general unqualified admis- 
sion to offices, to a consolidation of government, seems easy; for, though 
the American states are dissimilar in their structure, this will assimilate them. 
This, sir, is itself a strong consolidating feature, and is not one of the least 
dangerous in that system. Nine states are sufficient to establish this gov- 
ernment over those nine. Imagine that nine have come into it. Virginia 
has certain scruples. Suppose she will, consequently, refuse to join with those 
states; may not she still continue in friendship and union with them? If she 
sends her annual requisitions in dollars, do you think their stomachs will 
be so squeamish as to refuse her dollars? Will they not accept her regiments? 
They would intimidate you into an inconsiderate adoption, and frighten you 
with ideal evils, and that the Union shall be dissolved. 'Tis a bugbear, sir: 
the fact is, sir, that the eight adopting states can hardly stand on their own 
legs. Public fame tells us that the adopting states have already heart-burnings 
and animosity, and repent their precipitate hurry: this, sir, may occasion 
exceeding great mischief. When I reflect on these and many other circum- 
stances, I must think those states will be found to be in confederacy with us. 
If we pay our quota of money annually, and furnish our ratable number of 
men, when necessary, I can see no danger from a rejection. 

The history of Switzerland clearly proves that we might be in amicable 
alliance with those states without adopting this Constitution. Switzerland 
is a confederacy, consisting of dissimilar governments. This is an example 
which proves that governments of dissimilar structures may be confederated. 
That confederate republic has stood upwards of four hundred years; and, 
although several of the individual republics are democratic, and the rest 
aristocratic, no evil has resulted from this dissimilarity; for they have braved 
all the power of France and Germany during that long period. The Swiss 
spirit, sir, has kept them together; they have encountered and overcome 
immense difficulties with patience and fortitude. In the vicinity of powerful 
and ambitious monarchs, they have retained their independence, republican 
simplicity, and valor. . . . 

The most valuable end of government is the liberty of the inhabitants. 
No possible advantages can compensate for the loss of this privilege. Show 
me the reason why the American Union is to be dissolved. Who are those 
eight adopting states? Are they averse to give us a little time to consider, 
before we conclude? Would such a disposition render a junction with them 
eligible; or is it the genius of that kind of government to precipitate people 
hastily into measures of the utmost importance, and grant no indulgence? 
If it be, sir, is it for us to accede to such a government? We have a right to 
have time to consider; we shall therefore insist upon it. Unless the govern- 
ment be amended, we can never accept it. The adopting states will doubtless 



PATRICK HENRY 21 

accept our money and our regiments; and what is to be the consequence, 
if we are disunited? I believe it is yet doubtful, whether it is not proper to 
stand by a while, and see the effect of its adoption in other states. In forming 
a government, the utmost care should be taken to prevent its becoming 
oppressive; and this government is of such an intricate and complicated 
nature, that no man on this earth can know its real operation. The other 
states have no reason to think, from the antecedent conduct of Virginia, 
that she has any intention of seceding from the Union, or of being less 
active to support the general welfare. Would they not, therefore, acquiesce 
in our taking time to deliberate— deliberate whether the measure be not 
perilous, not only for us, but the adopting states? 

Permit me, sir, to say, that a great majority of the people, even in the 
adopting states, are averse to this government. I believe I would be right 
to say, that they have been egregiously misled. Pennsylvania has, ferhays, 
been tricked into it. If the other states who have adopted it have not been 
tricked, still they were too much hurried into its adoption. There were very 
respectable minorities in several of them; and if reports be true, a clear 
majority of the people are averse to it. If we also accede, and it should prove 
grievous, the peace and prosperity of our country, which we all love, will 
be destroyed. This government has not the affection of the people at present. 
Should it be oppressive, their affections will be totally estranged from it; 
and, sir, you know that a government, without their affections, can neither 
be durable nor happy. I speak as one poor individual; but when I speak, I 
speak the language of thousands. But, sir, I mean not to breathe the spirit, 
nor utter the language, of secession. 

I have trespassed so long on your patience, I am really concerned that I 
have something yet to say. The honorable member has said, we shall be 
properly represented. Remember, sir, that the number of our representatives 
is but ten, whereof six is a majority. Will those men be possessed of sufficient 
information? A particular knowledge of particular districts will not suffice. 
They must be well acquainted with agriculture, commerce, and a great 
variety of other matters throughout the continent; they must know not only 
the actual state of nations in Europe and America, the situations of their 
farmers, cottagers, and mechanics, but also the relative situations and inter- 
course of those nations. Virginia is as large as England. Our proportion of 
representatives is but ten men. In England they have five hundred and 
fifty-eight. The House of Commons, in England, numerous as they are, 
we are told, are bribed, and have bartered away the rights of their con- 
stituents: what, then, shall become of us? Will these few protect our rights? 
Will they be incorruptible? You say they will be better men than the English 
commoners. I say they will be infinitely worse men, because they are to 
be chosen blindfolded: their election (the term, as applied to their ap- 



22 RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

pointment, is inaccurate) will be an involuntary nomination, and not a 
choice. 

I have, I fear, fatigued the committee; yet I have not said the one hundred 
thousandth part of what I have on my mind, and wish to impart. On this 
occasion, I conceived myself bound to attend strictly to the interest of the 
state, and I thought her dearest rights at stake. Having lived so long— been 
so much honored— my efforts, though small, are due to my country. I have 
found my mind hurried on, from subject to subject, on this very great oc- 
casion. We have been all out of order, from the gentleman who opened 
to-day to myself. I did not come prepared to speak, on so multifarious a 
subject, in so general a manner. I trust you will indulge me another time. 
Before you abandon the present system, I hope you will consider not only 
its defects, most maturely, but likewise those of that which you are to sub- 
stitute for it. May you be fully apprized of the dangers of the latter, not by 
fatal experience, but by some abler advocate than I! 



For the Federal Constitution 



JAMES MADISON 



Born, Port Conway, Virginia, March 16, 1751; died, 
Montpelier, Virginia, ]une 2.8, 1836. Graduate of College 
of New Jersey. Elected to Virginia convention 1776, 
helped draft new state constitution. Served in Continen- 
tal Congress 1 780-1 783 and 1787-1788, and in Virginia 
legislature 1784.-1786. Worked with Hamilton to have 
Federal Constitutional Convention called. Because his was 
the chief hand in actual drafting of Constitution, has 
been called "the father of the Constitution." Contributed 
with Hamilton and Jay to Federalist Papers and led fight 
for ratification in Virginia. Representative to Congress, 
1789. Secretary of State in Jefferson's cabinet. President 
of United States, 1809-1817. 



M 



r. Chairman: I shall not attempt to make impres- 
sions by any ardent professions of zeal for the pub- 
lic welfare. We know the principles of every man will, and ought to be, 
judged, not by his professions and declarations, but by his conduct; by that 
criterion I mean, in common with every other member, to be judged; and 
should it prove unfavorable to my reputation, yet it is a criterion from which I 
will by no means depart. Comparisons have been made between the friends of 
this Constitution and those who oppose it: although I disapprove of such com- 
parisons, I trust that, in point of truth, honor, candor, and rectitude of motives, 
the friends of this system, here and in other states, are not inferior to its oppo- 
nents. But professions of attachment to the public good, and comparisons of 

Virginia Ratifying Convention, Richmond, June 6, 1788. Jonathan Elliot, ed., 
The Debates in the Several State Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Con- 
stitution, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1901), III, pp. 86-97. 

23 



24 RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

parties, ought not to govern or influence us now. We ought, sir, to examine the 
Constitution on its own merits solely: we are to inquire whether it will 
promote the public happiness: its aptitude to produce this desirable object 
ought to be the exclusive subject of our present researches. In this pursuit, 
we ought not to address our arguments to the feelings and passions, but to 
those understandings and judgments which were selected by the people of 
this country, to decide this great question by a calm and rational investiga- 
tion. I hope that gentlemen, in displaying their abilities on this occasion, 
instead of giving opinions and making assertions, will condescend to prove 
and demonstrate, by a fair and regular discussion. It gives me pain to hear 
gentlemen continually distorting the natural construction of language; for 
it is sufficient if any human production can stand a fair discussion. 

Before I proceed to make some additions to the reasons which have been 
adduced by my honorable friend over the way, I must take the liberty to 
make some observations on what was said by another gentleman [Mr. Henry]. 
He told us that this Constitution ought to be rejected because it endangered 
the public liberty, in his opinion, in many instances. Give me leave to 
make one answer to that observation: Let the dangers which this system 
is supposed to be replete with be clearly pointed out: if any dangerous and 
unnecessary powers be given to the general legislature, let them be plainly 
demonstrated; and let us not rest satisfied with general assertions of danger, 
without examination. If powers be necessary, apparent danger is not a suffi- 
cient reason against conceding them. He has suggested that licentiousness 
has seldom produced the loss of liberty; but that the tyranny of rulers has 
almost always effected it. Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe 
there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people 
by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent 
and sudden usurpations; but, on a candid examination of history, we shall 
find that turbulence, violence, and abuse of power, by the majority trampling 
on the rights of the minority, have produced factions and commotions, which, 
in republics, have, more frequently than any other cause, produced despotism. 
If we go over the whole history of ancient and modern republics, we shall 
find their destruction to have generally resulted from those causes. If we 
consider the peculiar situation of the United States, and what are the sources 
of that diversity of sentiment which pervades its inhabitants, we shall find 
great danger to fear that the same causes may terminate here in the same 
fatal effects which they produced in those republics. This danger ought to 
be wisely guarded against. Perhaps, in the progress of this discussion, it 
will appear that the only possible remedy for those evils, and means of 
preserving and protecting the principles of republicanism, will be found 
in that very system which is now exclaimed against as the parent of op- 
pression. 



JAMES MADISON 25 

I must confess I have not been able to find his usual consistency in the 
gentleman's argument on this occasion. He informs us that the people of 
the country are at perfect repose,— that is, every man enjoys the fruits of 
his labor peaceably and securely, and that every thing is in perfect tran- 
quillity and safety. I wish sincerely, sir, this were true. If this be their happy 
situation, why has every state acknowledged the contrary"? Why were deputies 
from all the states sent to the general Convention? Why have complaints 
of national and individual distresses been echoed and reechoed throughout 
the continent? Why has our general government been so shamefully dis- 
graced, and our Constitution violated? Wherefore have laws been made 
to authorize a change, and wherefore are we now assembled here? A federal 
government is formed for the protection of its individual members. Ours 
has attacked itself with impunity. Its authority has been disobeyed and 
despised. I think I perceive a glaring inconsistency in another of his argu- 
ments. He complains of this Constitution, because it requires the consent 
of at least three fourths of the states to introduce amendments which shall 
be necessary for the happiness of the people. The assent of so many he 
urges as too great an obstacle to the admission of salutary amendments, which, 
he strongly insists, ought to be at the will of a bare majority. We hear this 
argument, at the very moment we are called upon to assign reasons for 
proposing a constitution which puts it in the power of nine states to abolish 
the present inadequate, unsafe, and pernicious Confederation! In the first 
case, he asserts that a majority ought to have the power of altering the 
government, when found to be inadequate to the security of public happiness. 
In the last case, he affirms that even three fourths of the community have 
not a right to alter a government which experience has proved to be sub- 
versive of national felicity! nay, that the most necessary and urgent alterations 
cannot be made without the absolute unanimity of all the states! Does not 
the thirteenth article of the Confederation expressly require that no altera- 
tion shall be made without the unanimous consent of all the states? 
Could any thing in theory be more perniciously improvident and injudicious 
than this submission of the will of the majority to the most trifling minority? 
Have not experience and practice actually manifested this theoretical in- 
convenience to be extremely impolitic? Let me mention one fact, which 
I conceive must carry conviction to the mind of any one: the smallest state 
in the Union has obstructed every attempt to reform the government; that 
little member has repeatedly disobeyed and counteracted the general author- 
ity; nay, has even supplied the enemies of its country with provisions. Twelve 
states had agreed to certain improvements which were proposed, being 
thought absolutely necessary to preserve the existence of the general govern- 
ment; but as these improvements, though really indispensable, could not, by 
the Confederation, be introduced into it without the consent of every state, 



26 RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

the refractory dissent of that little state prevented their adoption. The incon- 
veniences resulting from this requisition, of unanimous concurrence in 
alterations in the Confederation, must be known to every member in this 
Convention; it is therefore needless to remind them of them. Is it not self- 
evident that a trifling minority ought not to bind the majority? Would not 
foreign influence be exerted with facility over a small minority? Would the 
honorable gentleman agree to continue the most radical defects in the old 
system, because the petty state of Rhode Island would not agree to remove 
them? 

He next objects to the exclusive legislation over the district where the 
seat of government may be fixed. Would he submit that the representatives 
of this state should carry on their deliberations under the control of any 
other member of the Union? If any state had the power of legislation over 
the place where Congress should fix the general government, this would 
impair the dignity, and hazard the safety, of Congress. If the safety of the 
Union were under the control of any particular state, would not foreign 
corruption probably prevail, in such a state, to induce it to exert its con- 
trolling influence over the members of the general government? Gentlemen 
cannot have forgotten the disgraceful insult which Congress received some 
years ago. When we also reflect that the previous cession of particular states 
is necessary before Congress can legislate exclusively any where, we must, 
instead of being alarmed at this part, heartily approve of it. 

But the honorable member sees great danger in the provision concerning 
the militia. This I conceive to be an additional security to our liberty, with- 
out diminishing the power of the states in any considerable degree. It appears 
to me so highly expedient that I should imagine it would have found ad- 
vocates even in the warmest friends of the present system. The authority 
of training the militia, and appointing the officers, is reserved to the states. 
Congress ought to have the power to establish a uniform discipline through- 
out the states, and to provide for the execution of the laws, suppress in- 
surrections, and repel invasions: these are the only cases wherein they can 
interfere with the militia; and the obvious necessity of their having power 
over them in these cases must convince any reflecting mind. Without uni- 
formity of discipline, military bodies would be incapable of action: without 
a general controlling power to call forth the strength of the Union to repel 
invasions, the country might be overrun and conquered by foreign enemies: 
without such a power to suppress insurrections, our liberties might be de- 
stroyed by domestic faction, and domestic tyranny be established. 

The honorable member then told us that there was no instance of power 
once transferred being voluntarily renounced. Not to produce European 
examples, which may probably be done before the rising of this Convention, 
have we not seen already, in seven states (and probably in an eighth state), 



JAMES MADISON 1J 

legislatures surrendering some of the most important powers they possessed? 
But, sir, by this government, powers are not given to any particular set of 
men; they are in the hands of the people; delegated to their representatives 
chosen for short terms; to representatives responsible to the people, and 
whose situation is perfectly similar to their own. As long as this is the case 
we have no danger to apprehend. When the gentleman called our recollec- 
tion to the usual effects of the concession of powers, and imputed the loss 
of liberty generally to open tyranny, I wish he had gone on farther. Upon 
his review of history, he would have found that the loss of liberty very often 
resulted from factions and divisions; from local considerations, which eternally 
lead to quarrels; he would have found internal dissensions to have more 
frequently demolished civil liberty, than a tenacious disposition in rulers 
to retain any stipulated powers. . . . 

The power of raising and supporting armies is exclaimed against as danger- 
ous and unnecessary. I wish there were no necessity of vesting this power 
in the general government. But suppose a foreign nation to declare war 
against the United States; must not the general legislature have the power 
of defending the United States? Ought it to be known to foreign nations 
that the general government of the United States of America has no power 
to raise and support an army, even in the utmost danger, when attacked 
by external enemies? Would not their knowledge of such a circumstance 
stimulate them to fall upon us? If, sir, Congress be not invested with this 
power, any powerful nation, prompted by ambition or avarice, will be 
invited, by our weakness, to attack us; and such an attack, by disciplined 
veterans, would certainly be attended with success, when only opposed by 
irregular, undisciplined militia. Whoever considers the peculiar situation of 
this country, the multiplicity of its excellent inlets and harbors, and the 
uncommon facility of attacking it,— however much he may regret the neces- 
sity of such a power, cannot hesitate a moment in granting it. One fact may 
elucidate this argument. In the course of the late war, when the weak parts 
of the Union were exposed, and many states were in the most deplorable 
situation by the enemy's ravages, the assistance of foreign nations was 
thought so urgently necessary for our protection, that the relinquishment of 
territorial advantages was not deemed too great a sacrifice for the acquisition 
of one ally. This expedient was admitted with great reluctance, even by 
those states who expected advantages from it. The crisis, however, at length 
arrived, when it was judged necessary for the salvation of this country to 
make certain cessions to Spain; whether wisely or otherwise is not for me 
to say; but the fact was, that instructions were sent to our representative at 
the court of Spain, to empower him to enter into negotiations for that pur- 
pose. How it terminated is well known. This fact shows the extremities 
to which nations will go in cases of imminent danger, and demonstrates the 



28 RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

necessity of making ourselves more respectable. The necessity of making 
dangerous cessions, and of applying to foreign aid, ought to be excluded. 

The honorable member then told us that there are heart-burnings in the 
adopting states, and that Virginia may, if she does not come into the measure, 
continue in amicable confederacy with the adopting states. I wish as seldom 
as possible to contradict the assertions of gentlemen; but I can venture to 
affirm, without danger of being in an error, that there is the most satisfactory 
evidence that the satisfaction of those states is increasing every day, and 
that, in that state where it was adopted only by a majority of nineteen, there 
is not one fifth of the people dissatisfied. There are some reasons which 
induce us to conclude that the grounds of proselytism extend every where; 
its principles begin to be better understood; and the inflammatory violence 
wherewith it was opposed by designing, illiberal, and unthinking minds, 
begins to subside. I will not enumerate the causes from which, in my con- 
ception, the heart-burnings of a majority of its opposers have originated. 
Suffice it to say, that in all they were founded on a misconception of its 
nature and tendency. Had it been candidly examined and fairly discussed, 
I believe, sir, that but a very inconsiderable minority of the people of the 
United States would have opposed it. With respect to the Swiss, whom the 
honorable gentleman has proposed for our example, as far as historical 
authority may be relied on, we shall find their government quite unworthy 
of our imitation. I am sure, if the honorable gentleman had adverted to 
their history and government, he never would have quoted their example 
here; he would have found that, instead of respecting the rights of mankind, 
their government (at least of several of their cantons) is one of the vilest 
aristocracies that ever was instituted: the peasants of some of their cantons 
are more oppressed and degraded than the subjects of any monarch in 
Europe; nay, almost as much so as those of any Eastern despot. It is a 
novelty in politics, that from the worst of systems the happiest consequences 
should ensue. Their aristocratical rigor, and the peculiarity of their situation, 
have so long supported their union: without the closest alliance and amity, 
dismemberment might follow; their powerful and ambitious neighbors would 
immediately avail themselves of their least jarrings. As we are not circum- 
stanced like them, no conclusive precedent can be drawn from their situation. 
I trust the gentleman does not carry his idea so far as to recommend a separa- 
tion from the adopting states. This government may secure our happiness; 
this is at least as probable as that it shall be oppressive. If eight states have, 
from a persuasion of its policy and utility, adopted it, shall Virginia shrink 
from it, without a full conviction of its danger and inutility? I hope she 
will never shrink from any duty; I trust she will not determine without 
the most serious reflection and deliberation. 

I confess to you, sir, were uniformity of religion to be introduced by this 



JAMES MADISON 29 

system, it would, in my opinion, be ineligible; but I have no reason to 
conclude that uniformity of government will produce that of religion. This 
subject is, for the honor of America, perfectly free and unshackled. The 
government has no jurisdiction over it: the least reflection will convince us 
there is no danger to be feared on this ground. 

But we are flattered with the probability of obtaining previous amend- 
ments. This calls for the most serious attention of this house. If amendments 
are to be proposed by one state, other states have the same right, and will also 
propose alterations. These cannot but be dissimilar, and opposite in their 
nature. I beg leave to remark, that the governments of the different states 
are in many respects dissimilar in their structure; their legislative bodies are 
not similar; their executive are more different. In several of the states, the 
first magistrate is elected by the people at large; in others, by joint ballot of 
the members of both branches of the legislature; and in others, in other dif- 
ferent manners. This dissimilarity has occasioned a diversity of opinion 
on the theory of government, which will, without many reciprocal conces- 
sions, render a concurrence impossible. Although the appointment of an 
executive magistrate has not been thought destructive to the , principles of 
democracy in many of the states, yet, in the course of the debate, we find 
objections made to the federal executive: it is urged that the President will 
degenerate into a tyrant. I intended, in compliance with the call of the 
honorable member, to explain the reasons of proposing this Constitution, 
and develop its principles; but I shall postpone my remarks till we hear 
the supplement which, he has informed us, he intends to add to what he 
has already said. 

Give me leave to say something of the nature of the government, and 
to show that it is safe and just to vest it with the power of taxation. There 
are a number of opinions; but the principal question is, whether it be a 
federal or consolidated government. In order to judge properly of the question 
before us, we must consider it minutely in its principal parts. I conceive 
myself that it is of a mixed nature; it is in a manner unprecedented; we 
cannot find one express example in the experience of the world. It stands 
by itself. In some respects it is a government of a federal nature; in others, 
it is of a consolidated nature. Even if we attend to the manner in which 
the Constitution is investigated, ratified, and made the act of the people 
of America, I can say, notwithstanding what the honorable gentleman has 
alleged, that this government is not completely consolidated, nor is it entirely 
federal. Who are parties to it? The people— but not the people as composing 
one great body; but the people as composing thirteen sovereignties. Were 
it, as the gentleman asserts, a consolidated government, the assent of a 
majority of the people would be sufficient for its establishment; and, as a 
majority have adopted it already, the remaining states would be bound 



30 RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

by the act of the majority, even if they unanimously reprobated it. Were 
it such a government as is suggested, it would be now binding on the people 
of this state, without having had the privilege of deliberating upon it. But, 
sir, no state is bound by it, as it is, without its own consent. Should all the 
states adopt it, it will be then a government established by the thirteen 
states of America, not through the intervention of the legislatures, but by 
the people at large. In this particular respect, the distinction between the 
existing and proposed governments is very material. The existing system 
has been derived from the dependent derivative authority of the legislatures 
of the states; whereas this is derived from the superior power of the people. 
If we look at the manner in which alterations are to be made in it, the 
same idea is, in some degree, attended to. By the new system, a majority 
of the states cannot introduce amendments; nor are all the states required 
for that purpose; three fourths of them must concur in alterations; in this 
there is a departure from the federal idea. The members to the national 
House of Representatives are to be chosen by the people at large, in propor- 
tion to the numbers in the respective districts. When we come to the Senate, 
its members are elected by the states in their equal and political capacity. 
But had the government been completely consolidated, the Senate would 
have been chosen by the people in their individual capacity, in the same 
manner as the members of the other house. Thus it is of a complicated nature; 
and this complication, I trust, will be found to exclude the evils of absolute 
consolidation, as well as of a mere confederacy. If Virginia was separated 
from all the states, her power and authority would extend to all cases: in 
like manner, were all powers vested in the general government, it would be 
a consolidated government; but the powers of the federal government are 
enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers 
on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction. 
But the honorable member has satirized, with peculiar acrimony, the 
powers given to the general government by this Constitution. I conceive 
that the first question on this subject is, whether these powers be necessary; 
if they be, we are reduced to the dilemma of either submitting to the in- 
convenience or losing the Union. Let us consider the most important of 
these reprobated powers; that of direct taxation is most generally objected to. 
With respect to the exigencies of government, there is no question but the 
most easy mode of providing for them will be adopted. When, therefore, 
direct taxes are not necessary, they will not be recurred to. It can be of little 
advantage to those in power to raise money in a manner oppressive to the 
people. To consult the conveniences of the people will cost them nothing, 
and in many respects will be advantageous to them. Direct taxes will only 
be recurred to for great purposes. What has brought on other nations those 
immense debts, under the pressure of which many of them labor? Not the 



JAMES MADISON 3 1 

expenses of their governments, but war. If this country should be engaged 
in war,— and I conceive we ought to provide for the possibility of such a 
case,— how would it be carried on? By the usual means provided from year 
to year? As our imports will be necessary for the expenses of government 
and other common exigencies, how are we to carry on the means of defence? 
How is it possible a war could be supported without money or credit? and 
would it be possible for a government to have credit without having the 
power of raising money? No; it would be impossible for any government, in 
such a case, to defend itself. Then, I say, sir, that it is necessary to establish 
funds for extraordinary exigencies, and to give this power to the general 
government; for the utter inutility of previous requisitions on the states 
is too well known. Would it be possible for those countries, whose finances 
and revenues are carried to the highest perfection, to carry on the operations 
of government on great emergencies, such as the maintenance of a war, 
without an uncontrolled power of raising money? Has it not been necessary 
for Great Britain, notwithstanding the facility of the collection of her taxes, 
to have recourse very often to this and other extraordinary methods of 
procuring money? Would not her public credit have been ruined, if it 
was known that her power to raise money was limited? Has not France 
been obliged, on great occasions, to use unusual means to raise funds? It has 
been the case in many countries, and no government can exist unless its 
powers extend to make provisions for every contingency. If we were actually 
attacked by a powerful nation, and our general government had not the 
power of raising money, but depended solely on requisitions, our condition 
would be truly deplorable: if the revenue of this commonwealth were to 
depend on twenty distinct authorities, it would be impossible for it to carry 
on its operations. This must be obvious to every member here; I think, 
therefore, that it is necessary, for the preservation of the Union, that this 
power shall be given to the general government. 

But it is urged that its consolidated nature, joined to the power of direct 
taxation, will give it a tendency to destroy all subordinate authority; that 
its increasing influence will speedily enable it to absorb the state govern- 
ments. I cannot think this will be the case. If the general government were 
wholly independent of the governments of the particular states, then, indeed, 
usurpation might be expected to the fullest extent. But, sir, on whom does 
this general government depend? It derives its authority from these govern- 
ments, and from the same sources from which their authority is derived. The 
members of the federal government are taken from the same men from 
whom those of the state legislatures are taken. If we consider the mode in 
which the federal representatives will be chosen, we shall be convinced 
that the general will never destroy the individual governments; and this 
conviction must be strengthened by an attention to the construction of the 



32 RATIFICATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 

Senate. The representatives will be chosen probably under the influence 
of the members of the state legislatures; but there is not the least probability 
that the election of the latter will be influenced by the former. One hundred 
and sixty members represent this commonwealth in one branch of the 
legislature, are drawn from the people at large, and must ever possess more 
influence than the few men who will be elected to the general legislature. 
. . . Those who wish to become federal representatives must depend on 
their credit with that class of men who will be the most popular in their 
counties, who generally represent the people in the state governments; they 
can, therefore, never succeed in any measure contrary to the wishes of those 
on whom they depend. It is almost certain, therefore, that the deliberations 
of the members of the federal House of Representatives will be directed to 
the interest of the people of America. As to the other branch, the senators 
will be appointed by the legislatures; and, though elected for six years, I 
do not conceive they will so soon forget the source from whence they derive 
their political existence. This election of one branch of the federal by the 
state legislatures, secures an absolute dependence of the former on the 
latter. The biennial exclusion of one third will lessen the facility of a 
combination, and may put a stop to intrigues. I appeal to our past experience, 
whether they will attend to the interests of their constituent states. Have 
not those gentlemen, who have been honored with seats in Congress, often 
signalized themselves by their attachment to their seats? I wish this govern- 
ment may answer the expectation of its friends, and foil the apprehension of 
its enemies. I hope the patriotism of the people will continue, and be a 
sufficient guard to their liberties. I believe its tendency will be, that the 
state governments will counteract the general interest, and ultimately pre- 
vail. The number of the representatives is yet sufficient for our safety, and 
will gradually increase; and, if we consider their different sources of informa- 
tion, the number will not appear too small. 



THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: 
A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 



How much popular government did the new nation 
require, how much could it tolerate? How far could the 
people he trusted to manage their political affairs so as 
to reconcile liberty with order and to secure both? 
Bothersome questions such as these— sometimes openly 
exposed, sometimes half-concealed— lie at the heart of 
much political discussion from the time of the Constitu- 
tional Convention to the present day. 

During pre-Civil War history individuals and politi- 
cal parties often divided sharply on the trustworthiness 
of the democratic thrust. Federalists inclined toward 
minority rule and looked to men of substance, accredited 
talent, and public virtue for energetic leadership in public 
councils. Fisher Ames, arch-Federalist orator from Boston, 
defined democracy as "A government by the passions of 
the multitude, or, no less correctly, according to the vices 
and ambitions of their leaders. . . ." In 1798, Timothy 
Dwight, President of Yale University, catalogued in a 
public address the sins of the French jacobins, hinted 
darkly that the party of Jefferson was filled with blood- 
brothers of the revolutionists, and put these chilling ques- 
tions: 

Shall we, my brethren, become partakers of these sins? 
Shall we introduce them into our government, our schools, 
our families? Shall we become the disciples of Voltaire, and 
the dragoons of Marat; or our daughters the concubines of 
the Illuminati? 

33 



34 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

The rule of the Federalist party was short-lived, hut its 
outlook was inherited hy the Whig 'party, a conglomera- 
tion of conservatives who were forced to assume a popular 
guise in order to compete with the Democratic party 
during the era of Jackson. On many matters Jefferson's 
Republican party, which was later called the Democratic 
party, contested with their rivals over expedients. Then 
as now, interest blocs and not ideology were foremost in 
the struggle for power. Even so, the party of Jefferson 
and Jackson separated from the Federalist-Whig tradition 
on at least one fundamental value: it encouraged exten- 
sions in popular rule. The great impact of Jacksonian 
democracy in particular was to broaden the base of popu- 
lar government and to promote the open society. 

Public discussion on the basis of political society went 
on around pot-bellied stoves, in constitutional conven- 
tions, in legislative chambers, and from the platform. 
Often it was an outcropping of debate on practical 
devices of government. The contributions of Daggett, 
Jefferson, Webster, and Bancroft suggest variety in per- 
spective and were part of a continuing discussion in 
various situations and accents. 

In 1799 David Daggett, stanch new England Federal- 
ist, but more urbane than Ames or Dwight, tilted at the 
specter of Jeffersonian democracy, and alleged its unsub- 
stantial Utopian idealism. Satirically, in the vein of 
Jonathan Swift, he sought to expose through his speech 
"Sun-Beams May Be Extracted from Cucumbers, But the 
Process Is Tedious" what he regarded as Jefferson's soft- 
headedness toward foreign intellectual influences, and to 
lay bare follies that were anathema to conservatives— wild 
experimentation, Deism, democracy, naive confidence in 
human reason, and sundry auguries. Daggett placed his 
faith in tradition as the keystone in the arch of the 
Republic. 

But Daggett and his fellow Federalists could not stop 



THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 35 

the tide then running, and on March 4, 1801, Jefferson 
replaced John Adams, the Federalist, and delivered the 
first presidential inaugural address given at the new seat 
of government in Washington. Jefferson openly declared 
his faith in majority rule and free discussion as unqualified 
principles of popular government. At the same time the 
conciliatory tone of his remarks did much to prove that 
Federalists had heen terrorized by phantoms of their own 
creation when they had represented him as a French 
Jacobin thinly disguised and bent on revolution under 
banners that flaunted doctrinaire slogans on the rights of 
man. 

Throughout the colonial and early national periods, 
property tests for voting and office-holding were applied 
as brakes on democracy. Increasingly such tests came 
under attack by artisans and mechanics. Between 18 10 
and 1820, six states entered the Union with constitutions 
that eliminated property qualifications for voting. One 
by one the older states were forced to divest themselves 
of property tests. In the Massachusetts Constitutional 
Convention of 1820, radical delegates challenged pro- 
visions in the old Constitution that fixed the number 
of representatives in the Senate on the basis of taxable 
wealth in the districts rather than upon population. In 
this setting, Daniel Webster, the great conservative, rose 
to speak for property and the status quo. "Not indeed," 
said Webster, "that every man's power should be in exact 
proportion to his property, but that, in a general sense, 
and in a general form, property as such should have 
its weight and influence in political arrangements." Web- 
ster's views did not prevail, but his speech, rooted in 
political thought and experience, has remained one of 
the most informed and cogent statements ever delivered 
in a deliberative assembly on the inexorable relationships 
between political society and the economic interests that 
lie at the heart of it. 



36 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

Fifteen years later, George Bancroft, distinguished his- 
torian and political figure, spoke in a new key. In his 
"The Office of the People in Art, Government, and Re- 
ligion," Bancroft challenged conservatives hy insisting 
upon the superiority of the collective or "common mind" 
over that of either the individual or an elite, holding that 
"the best government rests on the people and not on the 
few, on persons and not on property, on the free develop- 
ment of public opinion and not on authority ." 

Views on man and his political society voiced - by 
conservatives such as John Adams and Daniel Webster 
were shaped by the assumptions of economic realism. 
Those of George Bancroft were the product of emergent 
transcendental idealism fused with the more radical 
strains of jacksonian democracy. Out of this fusion, 
Bancroft uttered his optimistic declaration in behalf of 
mans intellectual and moral capabilities for self-govern- 
ment. Spanning the decades, his encomium of a peoples 
culture and government stirred the imagination of Wil- 
liam Jennings Bryan, the first great popular leader of the 
Democratic party since Jackson. In his Memoirs Bryan 
urged young speakers seeking political careers to turn to 
Bancroft's address as the best introduction to the true 
spirit of democracy. The speaker who heeds Bancroft, 
advised Bryan, becomes the authentic voice of the 
people. 1 



1 The Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan (Philadelphia: The 
John C. Winston Company, 1925), pp. 259-260. 



Sun-Beams May Be Extracted from 
Cucumbers, But the Process Is Tedious 



DAVID DAGGETT 



Born, Attleborough, Massachusetts, December 31, 1764; 
died, New Haven, Connecticut, April 12, 1851. Mem- 
ber of the Connecticut legislature for many years. United 
States Senator from Connecticut, 1813-1819. Chief Jus- 
tice of Connecticut Supreme Court. Professor of Law at 
Yale. Mayor of New Haven. Celebrated man of wit, of 
vigorous intellect and speech. His extant orations still 
communicate his lively polemical spirit. 



H 



istory informs us that at Lagado, in Laputa, there 
was a grand academy established, in which there 
was a display of much curious learning. 

One artist, of a very philosophic taste, was racking his invention to make a 
pin-cushion out of piece of marble. 

Another had formed an ingenious project to prevent the growth of wool 
upon two young lambs, by a composition of gums, minerals and vegetables, applied 
inwardly, and thus he hoped in a reasonable time to propagate the breed of 
naked sheep throughout the Kingdom. 

A third had contrived a plan to entirely abolish words; and this was urged 
as a great advantage in point of health as well as brevity. For it is plain that 
every word we speak is an injury to our lungs, by corrosion, and consequently 
contributes to the shortening of our lives. An expedient was therefore offered, 
that since words were only names for things, it would be more convenient 
for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express the 
particular business on which they were to discourse. 

An Oration Pronounced On the Fourth of July, 1799, At The Request of the 
Citizens of New-Haven, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Thomas Green and Son, 1799). 

37 



38 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

And the historian adds 

. . . that he had often beheld two of these sages almost sinking under the 
weight of their packs, who when they met in the streets would lay down their 
loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an hour together; then put up 
their implements, help each other to resume their burdens, and take their leave. 
A fourth appeared with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged 
and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt and skin were all of the same 
colour. He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sun-beams out 
of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials, hermetically sealed, and let 
out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He said he did not doubt but 
that in eight years more he should be able to supply the Governor's gardens 
with sunshine at a reasonable rate. 

These Theorists were very patient, industrious and laborious in their 
pursuits— had a high reputation for their singular proficiency, and were 
regarded as prodigies in science. The common laborers and mechanics were 
esteemed a different race of beings, and were despised for their stupid and 
old-fashioned manner of acquiring property and character. If the enquiry 
had been made whether any of these projects had succeeded, it would have 
been readily answered that they had not; but that they were reasonable— 
their principles just— and of course, that they must ultimately produce the 
objects in view. Hitherto no piece of marble had been made into a pin- 
cushion, and few, very few sun-beams had been extracted from cucumbers, 
but what then? Are not all great and noble and valuable things accomplished 
with immense exertion, and with an expense of much time? If a farther 
enquiry had been made what would be the great excellence of marble 
pin-cushions, or the superior advantage of a breed of naked sheep, the answer 
would have been, it is unphilosophical to ask such questions. 

In more modern times we have witnessed projects not unlike those of 
the learned of Laputa, above mentioned. A machine called an Automaton, 
was not long since constructed. This was designed to transport from place 
to place, by land, any load without the aid of horses, oxen, or any other animal. 
The master was to sit at helm, and guide it up hill and down, and over every 
kind of road. This machine was completed, and proved demonstrably capable 
of performing the duties assigned to it, and the only difficulty which attended 
it, and which hath hitherto prevented its universal use was, that it would 
not go— Here, if any ignorant fellow had been so uncivil, he might have 
doubted why, if wood and iron were designed to go alone and carry a load, 
the whole herd of oxen, horses, and camels were created. 

A few years ago the learned insisted that it was grovelling to travel either by 
land or water, but that the truly philosophical mode was to go by air. Hence, 
in all parts of the world speculatists were mounted in balloons, with the 
whole apparatus of living and dying, and were flying through the Heavens, 



DAVID DAGGETT 39 

to the utter astonishment and mortification of those poor illiterate wretches 
who were doomed to tug and sweat on the earth. To be sure this method 
of travelling was somewhat precarious.— A flaw of wind, regardless of the 
principles of this machine, might destroy it, or by the giving way of one 
philosophical pin, peg or rope, it might be let into the sea, or dashed against 
a rock, and thus its precious contents miserably perish. But doubtless reason 
will in time provide sufficient checks against all these casualties. Here again 
some *1}usy body in other men's matters" might ask, if it was intended that 
men should fly through the air, why were they not made with feathers and 
wings, and especially why are there so many who are justly called heavy- 
moulded men? 

Another class of the literati of our age, scorning to travel either on the sea, 
or on the land, or in the air, have constructed a submarine boat or diving 
machine, by which they were constantly groping among shark, sturgeon and 
sea-horses. To say nothing of the hazard which these gentlemen encounter 
of running on rocks or shoals, or of being left in the lurch, on the bottom 
of the sea, by a leak, may we not wonder that they were not made with fins 
and scales, and may they not esteem themselves very fortunate that they 
have hitherto escaped being cut up to be made into oil? 

These are a few among many modern inventions. All the principles of 
these various machines are capable of defence, and the inventors are all 
great, and learned, and ingenious men. Yet strange as it may seem, the stupid, 
foolish plodding people of this and other countries still keep their oxen and 
their horses— their carriages are still made as they were an hundred years 
ago, and our coasters will still go to New York on the surface of the Sound, 
instead of sinking to the bottom or rising into the clouds— and they still 
prefer a fair wind and tide to the greatest profusion of steam, produced in 
the most scientific manner. 

[Daggett illustrates further from the fields of agriculture and medicine.] 



A more extensive field for the operation of these principles has been 
opened, in the new theories of the education of children. It has lately been 
discovered that the maxim, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and 
when he is old he will not depart from it," is an erroneous translation, and 
should read thus— "Let a child walk in his own way, and when he is old 
he will be perfect." Volumes have been written, and much time and labor 
expended, to shew that all reproof, restraint and correction, tend directly 
to extinguish the fire of genius, to cripple the faculties and enslave the 
understanding. Especially we are told (and the system of education now 
adopted in the Great Gallic nursery of arts is entirely on this plan) that the 



40 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

prejudices of education, and an inclination to imitate the example of parents 
and other ancestors, is the great bane of the peace, dignity and glory of 
young men, and that reason will conduct them, if not fettered with habits, 
to the perfection of human nature. Obedience to parents is expressly re- 
probated, and all the tyranny and despotism in the world ascribed to parental 
authority. This sentiment is explicitly avowed by Mr. Volney, who is the 
friend and associate of many distinguished men in the United States, and 
who has, in this opinion, shewed that Paul was a fool or knave when he 
said, "Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right." 

If any person, groping in darkness, should object to these sentiments and 
enquire, how it is possible that children should become thus excellent if left 
entirely to themselves, when the experience of ages has been that with great 
and continued exertions, no such facts have existed, it may be replied, the 
projector of Laputa had not been able in eight years to extract sun-beams 
from Cucumbers, but he was certain it would be done in eight years more. 

We all recollect when these principles began to impress our Colleges— 
when it was seriously contended that the study of mathematics and natural 
philosophy was ruinous to the health, genius and character of a young gentle- 
man—that music and painting, and dancing and fencing, and speaking 
French, were the only accomplishments worth possessing; and that Latin and 
Greek were fitted only for stupid divines or black-letter-lawyers. An indispen- 
sable part of this philosophical, and polite, and genteel and pretty education 
was, to travel into foreign countries, and there reside long enough to forget 
all the early habits of life— to forget all domestic connexions— to forget the 
school-house where he was first taught his New England primer— to forget the 
old-fashioned meeting-house where he was first led to worship God, and 
especially to forget his native country, and to remember only, but remember 
always and effectually, that he was a polished cosmopolite, or citizen of the 
world. 

The system of morals which has been reared by the care, anxiety and wis- 
dom of ages, has, in its turn, been assailed by these Theorists. The language 
of modern reformers to those who venerate ancient habits, ancient manners, 
ancient systems of morals and education, is, "O fools, when will ye be wise?" 
To first shake, and then destroy the faith of every man on these interesting 
subjects, has been attempted by many distinguished men, with an industry, 
labor and perseverance which deserved a better cause, and has been for many 
years a prime object of pursuit in that nation which has been the great hot- 
bed of premature and monstrous productions. To particularize on this subject 
would be impossible, but I cannot forbear to hint at a few of those doctrines 
now strenuously supported. 

That men should love their children precisely according to their worth, and 
that if a neighbor's child be more deserving, it should be preferred. 

That men are to regard the general good in all their conduct, and of course 



DAVID DAGGETT 4 1 

to break promises, contracts and engagements, or perform them, as will con- 
duce to this object. 

That to refuse to lend a sum of money, when possible, and when the ap- 
plicant is in need of it, is an act equally criminal with theft or robbery, to the 
same amount. 

If a difficulty should here be started, that men may judge erroneously as to 
the desert of a neighbor's child— the demands of the public as to the fulfilment 
of a promise, or the necessity for the loan in the case mentioned, the answer is 
ready, reason, mighty reason, will be an infallible guide. A plain old-fashioned 
man will say, this is indeed a beautiful system, but there appears one dif- 
ficulty attending it, that is, it is made for a race of beings entirely different 
from men. Again, says he— Why for six thousand years the love of parents to 
children has been considered as the only tie by which families have been con- 
nected; and families have been considered as the strongest band and most 
powerful cement of society— destroy then this affection, and what better than 
miserable vagabonds will be the inhabitants of the earth?— This part of the 
project really strikes me, he adds, like the attempt to prorogate the breed of 
naked sheep. Then again, it is quite doubtful whether parents of ordinary 
nerves can, at once, divest themselves of natural affection.— Indeed, there is 
a strong analogy between this part of the scheme, and making a pin-cushion 
out of a piece of marble.— But to the cosmopolite, who belongs nowhere, is 
connected with nobody, and who has been from his youth progressing to per- 
fection, these sentiments are just, and the exercise of them quite feasible. 

But these modern theories have appeared in their native beauty, and shone 
with the most resplendent lustre, in the science of politics. We are seriously 
told that men are to be governed only by reason. Instruct men and there will 
be an end of punishment. It is true, since the world began, not a family, a 
state or a nation has been, on these principles, protected; but this is because 
reason has not been properly exercised. The period now approaches when 
reason unfolds itself— one more hot-bed will mature it, and then behold the 
glorious harvest! 

But it may be stupidly asked what shall be done in the mean time? Men 
are now somewhat imperfect— Theft, burglary, robbery and murder are now 
and then committed, and it will be some years before the perfection of human 
nature will shield us from these evils. This interregnum will be somewhat 
calamitous.— And also, is it certain that the commission of crimes has a 
tendency to refine and perfect the perpetrator? These questions never should 
be asked at the close of the eighteenth century.— They are manifestly too 
uncivil. 

Again, say modern theories, men are all equal, and of course no restraints are 
imposed by society— no distinctions can exist, except to gratify the pride of the 
ambitious, the cruelty of the despotic. Hence it is the plain duty of every in- 
dividual, to hasten the reign of liberty and equality. It is not a novel opinion, 



42 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

that men are by nature possessed of equal rights, and that "God hath made of 
one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth," but 'tis some- 
what doubtful whether every man should be permitted to do as he pleases.— 
Such liberty, it may be said, is unsafe with men who are not perfect.— A 
cosmopolite, to be sure, will not abuse it, because he loves all mankind in an 
equal degree: but the expediency of the general principle may be questioned 
—any opinion of great and learned men in any wise, to the contrary notwith- 
standing. 

If, however, by liberty and equality is intended the power of acting with 
as much freedom as is consistent with the public safety— and that each man 
has the same right to the protection of law as another, there is no controversy; 
but these terms, as now explained, advocated and adopted, mean the power 
of acting without any other restraint than reason, and the levelling all distinc- 
tions by right or wrong, and thus understood, they are of rather too suspicious 
a character for men of ordinary talents to admit. 

But these principles extend still farther— their grasp is wider. They aim at 
the actual destruction of every government on earth. 

Kings are the first object of their attack— then a nobility— then commons. 

To prepare the way for the accomplishment of these objects, all former 
systems of thinking and acting must be annihilated, and the reign of reason 
firmly established. 

But it will be enquired, where have these novel theories appeared? I an- 
swer—They have dawned upon New England— they have glowed in the south- 
ern states— they have burnt in France. We have seen a few projectors in Boats, 
Balloons and Automatons— A few philosophical farmers— A few attempts to 
propagate the breed of naked sheep— and we have at least one Philosopher in 
the United States, who has taken an accurate mensuration of the Mammoth's 
bones— made surprising discoveries in the doctrine of vibrating pendulums, 
and astonished the world with the precise gauge and dimensions of all the 
aboriginals in America. 

But in France, for many years, these speculations in agriculture, the 
mechanic arts, education, morals and government, have been adopted and 
pursued. It is there declared and established by law, that ancient habits, cus- 
toms and manners, modes of thinking, reasoning and acting, ought to be 
ridiculed, despised and rejected, for that a totally new order of things has 
taken place. All those rules of action which civilized nations have deemed 
necessary to their peace and happiness, have been declared useless or arbitrary, 
unnecessary or unjust. The most distinguished treatises on the laws of nations 
—treatises which have been considered as containing rules admirably adapted 
to the situation of different countries, and therefore of high authority, have 
not only been disregarded, but publicly contemned as musty, worm-eaten 
productions. Even that accomplished Cosmopolite, Mr. Genet, who came the 
messenger of feace and science to this guilty and deluded people, and who 



DAVID DAGGETT 43 

treated us precisely according to those assumed characters, opened his budget 
with an explicit renunciation of the principles of Puffendorf, Vattel, and 
other writers of that description, and declared that his nation would be gov- 
erned by none of their obsolete maxims. 

Indeed, this learned nation has yielded implicitly to the sentiments of 
Mr. Volney, Mr. Paine, and Mr. Godwin, in all questions of morals and 
policy; and in all matters of religion there is associated with them that learned 
and pious divine the Bishop of Autun [Talleyrand], who had the Cosmo- 
politism to boast that he had preached twenty years, under an oath, without 
believing a word which he uttered. 

To aid the establishment of these projects, the credulity of the present age 
has become truly astonishing. There appears to be a new machinery for the 
mind, by which its capacity at believing certain things is perfect. It is be- 
lieved that Socrates, and Plato and Seneca— Bacon, Newton and Locke, and 
all who lived and died prior to the commencement of the French Revolution, 
were either fools or slaves. That in no country but France is there science or 
virtue. That the body of the people in England are now groaning under the 
most oppressive bondage and tyranny. That this was precisely the case in 
Holland, Italy and Switzerland, till France introduced them to their present 
happy condition. It is believed by all the Cosmopolites in Europe, and by 
many in America— by all genuine Jacobins, by many Democrats, by the 
greater part of the readers of the Aurora, the Argus and the Bee, and by an 
innumerable multitude who don't read at all, that the citizens of these States, 
and particularly of New England, are miserable, benighted, enslaved and 
wretched dupes; and that the President and his adherents are in a firm league 
to injure and destroy them. That our members of Congress, and the heads of 
departments, are bribed with British gold, and are exerting all their faculties 
to forge chains for their posterity. That all in any way connected with the 
government are constantly plundering the Treasury— amassing wealth— be- 
coming independent— and thus establishing an abominable, cruel, wicked, 
despotic and devilish aristocracy, which is to continually enlarge its grasp till 
it shall embrace all the valuable interests of America, and leave the people 
"destitute, afflicted, tormented." And finally, it is believed by many that John 
Adams has entered into copartnership with John Q. Adams, his son, now 
Minister at Berlin, for the express purpose of importing Monarchy, by whole- 
sale, into this country. And to increase and perpetuate the stock of the house, 
that the son is to marry one of the daughters of the King of England. 

If you enquire respecting the truth of these things, they cite Gallatin, 
Nicholas and Lyon— they quote from the Aurora, the Argus and the Bee; and 
who can doubt these sources of information, since the various publications, 
within a year past, respecting Connecticut, this City, and our College? 

But it may be asked, where is your proof that the sentiments and theories 
which you have been describing, in fact, have an existence? Where is your 



44 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

proof, Sir, that the modern Literati are attempting to extract sun-beams from 
Cucumbers— to travel without exertion— to reap without sowing— to educate 
children to perfection— to introduce a new order of things as it respects morals 
and politics, social and civil duties, and to establish this strange species of 
credulity? I reply— those who have not yet become Cosmopolites need no 
proof. They have seen and heard and read these wild vagaries, and are there- 
fore satisfied of their existence. As to the others, I have only to remark that 
this same new machinery of the mind, by which certain things are believed, 
necessarily, and by the plain axiom that action and reaction are equal, pro- 
duces absolute incredulity as to certain other things, and of course no testi- 
mony will have any effect. Thus genuine Jacobins do not believe a word 
published in the Spectator, the Connecticut Journal, the Connecticut Courant, 
or the Sentinel. They do not believe that France has any intention to destroy 
the government of this country.— They do not believe that our ministers at 
Paris were treated with any neglect or contempt.— Indeed some doubt whether 
Mr. Pinckney ever was in France. They do not believe that Italy or Holland or 
Germany has ever been pillaged by the armies of the Republic, or that the 
path of those armies has been marked with any scenes of calamity and distress. 
In short, they do not believe but that the Directory, with their associates, are 
a benevolent society established in that regenerate country, for the great pur- 
pose of propagating religion and good government through the world; and 
that their armies are their missionaries to effect these glorious objects. 

And now my Fellow-Citizens, let me ask, what effects have been produced 
by these theoretic, speculative and delusive principles? France has made an 
experiment with them. Under pretence of making men perfect— of establish- 
ing perfect liberty— perfect equality— and an entirely new order of things, she 
has become one great Bedlam, in which some of the inhabitants are falling 
into the water, some into the fire, some biting and gnashing themselves with 
their teeth, and others beholding these acts, are chanting "rights of man! 
ca-ira!" 

With the pleasant but deceptive sounds of Liberty and Rights of Man on 
their tongues, they have made an open and violent war upon all the valuable 
interests of society. 

Their own country, Italy, Belgium, Batavia and Switzerland, making to- 
gether the fairest portion of Europe, have been despoiled by the arms of these 
reformers, and they are now plundering the wretched Arabs. 

No place has been too sacred for them to defile— no right too dear for them 
to invade— no property too valuable for them to destroy. 



We have seen the treatment of the Republic towards other nations— we 
have experienced it towards ourselves. There is no man, except the slaves of 



DAVID DAGGETT 45 

the credulity or incredulity, which I have mentioned, who doubts but their 
wish and object is, to destroy our government and subject us entirely to their 
control. 

They have robbed us on the sea, without law or pretence of law. 

They have declared, by a legislative act, that they will treat us as we may 
be compelled to suffer other nations to treat us. 

They have attempted to influence the election of our great officers, and 
particularly of President and Vice President. 

They have, through their Ministers and other agents, been creating a party 
in this country which has once and again, threatened us with the horrors of 
a civil war, and which has smitten us with a disease worse than the plague. 

From the day Mr. Genet landed on this Continent 'till the poisonous, 
debauching diplomatic intercourse between us and France was prohibited, 
French emissaries and American Jacobins have been constantly plotting and 
executing treasons against our government, which according to the laws of 
every well regulated society, would subject the authors to the punishment 
of death. 

When we have complained, the Directory have, with the most pointed 
abuse or sullen contempt, rejected our complaints. 

One minister has been refused an audience, and three were met with a 
mixture of the most foul and debasing intrigue. 

They demand, in terms, that the speeches of the President should be 
accommodated to a Directorial ear. Yes, Americans! They demand that the 
speeches of your President, delivered at the opening of Congress in con- 
formity to the Constitution, and in which it is his duty to declare the state of 
the Union, should be modified and accommodated to the ear of a juggling 
Directory. 

And why this imperious conduct?— Why this insufferable insolence? Come 
thou magnanimous republic, "Shew thy strong reasons!"— Let us hear 
them!— 

The Republic is great! Terrible to its enemies!— Beneficent to its friends! 
beneficent to republicans! Witness the blood and groans and universal 
desolation of Switzerland! blood and groans and desolation are the 

TROPHIES OF THY BENEFICENCE, THOU MAGNANIMOUS REPUBLIC. 

But the Republic is irresistible to support the rights of man!— She will cause 
the rights of man every where to be respected!— Rights of Man! I am astonished 
that the utterance of those words don't blister their tongues. Since the com- 
bination against France was defeated, she has uniformly been the aggressor, 
and Europe has become one great slaughter-house. Within this period, it is 
computed that more than four millions of people have perished by the 
revolution, and this mighty destruction has been effected in ways, by means 
and under circumstances so afflicting and distressing, that 'tis hardly possible 



46 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

to conceive how four millions of people could have perished with more infamy 
to the Republic. 

But the Directory proclaim, Liberty and Equality. Liberty and Equality!— 
Was the earth ever before insulted with such mockery!— The Directory, each 
of whom assumes a haughtiness, and appears with a pomp and splendor un- 
equalled by any potentate in Europe, insult the world by the pretence of 
establishing Liberty and Equality! 

But they "have opened prisons and bastiles, given freedom to the miserable 
captive, broken down the images of idolatry, and driven error and superstition 
from the earth." That they have unloosed bands is not denied— that they have 
destroyed the strongest ligaments by which individuals and societies were 
connected, is not denied, but that the cause of genuine liberty is promoted, I 
do deny. Is there a single country in Europe, in which their arms have 
triumphed, less oppressed, or less wretched now than ten years ago? 

That they have driven men from one species of error and superstition to 
another, is agreed. But what consolation is it to the wretched worshippers of 
stones to forget these gods, and adore reason, fortitude and virtue? 

If they found in Egypt those who were bowing down to onions and leeks, 
have they rendered them any essential service, by telling them henceforth 
to believe in the liberty and equality of man— in the perfectability of human 
nature, and in the eternal sleep of death? Paul, whose character they so 
heartily despise, acted a much more civil and kind (not to say Christian) 
part. He found an altar among the Athenians, inscribed 'To the Unknown 
God;" and beholding their devotions, cried, "Whom therefore, ye ignorantly 
worship, him declare I unto you." Let the advocates for the reformation in 
religion, which this nation are effecting, compare the plain and unadorned 
account of Paul's God, with the address of the French Apostle, Buonaparte, 
to the ignorant Egyptians. "There is no God but God. He has no son or as- 
sociate in his kingdom." 

But 'tis said, these mighty events, which now astonish the world, are in 
exact conformity to the will of Heaven. What do the asserters of this proposi- 
tion mean? That 'tis, in itself, right, and therefore agreeable to the will of 
Heaven, for one nation to destroy the government of another, be that govern- 
ment ever so bad?— If they mean this, I answer directly, the proposition is 
false. All writers on the laws of nations, without an exception, teach a directly 
opposite doctrine. Nay, this principle would place France above reproach.— It 
would give her the ground she has assumed, viz. That power is the only rule 
of action. This is her creed.— This her friends (I have once and again heard 
them) declare to be her standard. And what is this but a principle which has 
ever been the single rule of conduct in Hell!— 

But 'tis said, these events tend directly to fulfil a great plan for the good of 
the Universe. Do these apologists for Frenchmen mean, that the Directory, 



DAVID DAGGETT 47 

and their subordinates, are commissioned by God to destroy all the govern- 
ments on earth? If they mean this, I beg them to shew, first, that they are the 
privy counsellors of Heaven; and secondly, that such commissions have ac- 
tually issued. But do they mean that these horrid acts of plunder, treachery 
and murder are under the divine control, and therefore we must acquiesce 
and rejoice: 1 If they mean this, I congratulate them on their resignation, and 
wish that it may increase, till it produces a spirit of reconciliation to our own 
government. But is it a just principle, that we are to be thankful for all 
events, because they are under the divine control? I think the friends of this 
new theory should praise God for all the evil and misery which men commit, 
and suffer, and they will be entitled, then, to the credit of being consistent. 

But is it meant that these events will produce good, and therefore are 
the subject of rejoicing?— Thunder and lightning, volcanos and earthquakes, 
pestilence and famine, which affrighten, astonish and destroy, may produce 
good! The fire and plague, of 1665 and 1666, which desolated the first city in 
the world, probably have been followed with salutary consequences! But what 
assembly ever yet seriously engaged in mutual congratulation, that the 
pestilence was slaying its thousands, or that millions of old and young, inno- 
cent and guilty, were consumed by a conflagration, or swallowed up by an 
earthquake? 



If many of our countrymen approve the measures of France, and applaud 
them in their mad career of domination, I speak with confidence, the body of 
our citizens entertain different opinions. Such will cordially join in protecting 
our government, and in supporting an energetic administration. They will, 
particularly as a mean to accomplish this object, and the only one I shall now 
urge, discountenance that unparalleled abuse of all those to whom is entrusted 
the management of our national interests, which is now so prevalent. 

Not a man, tho' his private character were like tried gold, has escaped the 
most malignant censure.— The President, each head of department, each 
member of the Legislature, and every other man who supports the administra- 
tion, is daily charged with the most vile and degrading crimes. They are 
openly vilified, as parties to a conspiracy against the peace, the dignity, and 
the happiness of the United States. 

And who are these reformers, that exhibit these charges?— Are they the 
virtuous, meek, unspotted and holy of the earth? 

Who are these thus reproached? They are your neighbors, chosen to pro- 
tect your interests.— What is their object? Wealth?— If so, they are miserably 
employed. There is not a man among them who can, with the utmost 
economy, secure as much money as hundreds of merchants, lawyers, physi- 
cians, masters of vessels, and farmers, annually make by their various pursuits. 



48 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

But alas! they wish to enslave us. Is this their character in private life? Have 
they not, with you, houses and lands, character and liberty to defend?— Have 
they not wives and children, whose happiness is near their hearts?— And do 
they, indeed, labour and toil to forge chains and fetters for their children, 
and children's children, that their names and memories may go down to 
future generations covered with the bitterest curses? 

I have made these observations, my Fellow-Citizens, that we may, on this 
anniversary of our National existence, a day which I hope may be kept 
sacred to that solemn employment, contemplate the labours, the exertions and 
the characters of those venerable men who founded, and have hitherto, pro- 
tected this nation. I wish them to be seen, and compared with the speculating 
theorists and mushroom politicians of this age of reason. 

It is now less than two hundred years since the first settlement of white 
people was effected, in these United States; less than one hundred and eighty, 
since the first settlement was made in New England, and less than one hun- 
dred and seventy, since the first settlement was made in Connecticut. The 
place where we are now assembled was then a wild waste. Instead of cul- 
tivated fields, dens and caves. Instead of a flourishing city, huts and wigwams. 
Instead of polite, benevolent, and learned citizens, a horde of savages. Instead 
of a seat of science, full of young men qualifying to adorn and bless their 
country, here was only taught the art of tormenting ingeniously, and here 
were only heard the groans of the dying. 

What is here said of New Haven may, with little variation, be said of all 
New England, and of many other parts of the United States. 

We have now upwards of four millions of inhabitants, cultivating a fertile 
country, and engaged in a commerce, with 876,000 tons of shipping, and 
second only to that of Great Britain. 

How has this mighty change been effected?— Was it by magic? By super- 
natural aid? Or was it by ingenious theories in morals, economics and govern- 
ment? My Fellow-Citizens, it was accomplished by the industry, the labour, 
the perseverance, the sufferings and virtues of those men from whom we 
glory in being descended. 

These venerable men spent no time in extracting sun-beams from cucum- 
bers—in writing letters to Mazzei, or perplexing the world with the jargon 
of the perfectability of human nature. 

They and their illustrious descendants pursued directly, and by those 
means which always will succeed, for they always have succeeded, those 
which common sense dictates, the erection and support of good government 
and good morals. To effect these great objects they stood like monuments, 
with their wives, their children, and their lives in their hands,— They fought— 
they bled— they died.— At this expense of ease, happiness and life, they made 
establishments for posterity— they protected them against savages— they 



DAVID DAGGETT 49 

cemented them with their blood— they delivered them to us as a sacred 
deposit, and if we suffer them to be destroyed by the tinselled refinements 
of this age, we shall deserve the reproaches, with which impartial justice will 
cover such a pusillanimous race. 

Look particularly at the various complaints, remonstrances and petitions 
made by these States, on various occasions, from the first settlement of this 
country to the 4th of July 1776, and compare them with the state papers of 
the great Republic. In the one you will see the plain, pointed language of 
injured innocence, demanding redress— in the other, the sly, wily, ambiguous, 
chameleon dialect of Jesuits, curiously wrought up to mean everything and 
nothing, by a set of mountebank politicians, headed by a perjured Bishop of 
Autun. 

At this day there exist two parties in these United States. At the head of 
one are Washington, Adams and Ellsworth.— The object of this party is to 
protect and defend the government from that destruction with which they 
believe it threatened, by its enemies. To preserve and transmit to posterity 
those establishments which they believe important to the happiness of society. 

At the head of the other, is the gentleman who drank toasts at Fredericks- 
burgh in May 1798, in direct contempt of our government, who wrote the 
letter to Mazzei, with Gallatin and Nicholas, and Lyon, and to grace the 
company they shine, with the borrowed lustre of Talleyrand, that dissembler 
to God and Man. The object of this party is to destroy ancient systems- 
ancient habits— ancient customs— to introduce a new liberty, new equality, 
new rights of man, new modes of education, and a new order of things. 

Let them meet and make a full, fair, and perfect exposition of their prin- 
ciples—their objects, and the means by which they are to be accomplished— 
And let there be present at this display, the departed spirits of Davenport, 
Hooker, Winthrop, Wolcott, Hopkins, Haynes and Heaton, and let there 
also appear a Lawrence, a Warren, a Mercer, and a Wooster, and to which of 
these parties would they give their blessing?— For which of these causes, if it 
were possible to bleed and die again in the cause of America, would the be- 
loved WARREN AGAIN BLEED AND DIE? 



First Inaugural Address 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 



Born, Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia, April 13, 
1743; died, Monticello, July 4, 1826. Graduate of Wil- 
liam and Mary. Studied and practiced law. Member of 
the House of Burgesses, 1769-17*/$. Delegate to the Con- 
tinental Congress, 177 $-1776; drafted the Declaration 
of Independence. Served in the Virginia legislature from 
1776-1779. Governor of Virginia, 1 779-1 781. Returned 
to the Congress, 1783-1784. Minister to Trance, 1785- 
1789; witnessed the outbreak of the French Revolution. 
Washington's first Secretary of State until 1793, when he 
resigned in protest to Hamiltonian policies. Vice-Presi- 
dent under John Adams. Third President of United 
States, 1801-1809. Founded University of Virginia, 181 9. 
Jefferson was a philosopher-statesman of the Enlighten- 
ment. His First Inaugural Address ranks among the fore- 
most statements in this quadrennial tradition. 



JHriends and Fellow-Citizens: Called upon to under- 
1* take the duties of the first executive office of our 
country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens 
which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks for the favor with 
which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere 
consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach 
it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the 
charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire. A rising nation, 
spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich 

Washington, D.C., March 4, 1801. Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the 
United States, House Document No. 540 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 
1952), pp. n-14. 

5o 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 5 1 

productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel 
power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of 
mortal eye— when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the 
honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the 
issue and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and 
humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, 
should I despair did not the presence of many whom I here see remind me 
that in the other high authorities provided by our Constitution I shall find 
resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal on which to rely under all dif- 
ficulties. To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the sovereign func- 
tions of legislation, and to those associated with you, I look with encourage- 
ment for that guidance and support which may enable us to steer with safety 
the vessel in which we are all embarked amidst the conflicting elements of a 
troubled world. 

During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the anima- 
tion of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which 
might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write 
what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, an- 
nounced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange 
themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the 
common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though 
the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must 
be reasonable; that the minority possesses their equal rights, which equal law 
must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, 
unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that 
harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but 
dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that 
religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we 
have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as 
wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes 
and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of in- 
furiated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was 
not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant 
and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less 
by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every dif- 
ference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different 
names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all 
Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union 
or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of 
the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left 
free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican 
government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; 



52 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, 
abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic 
and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by pos- 
sibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the con- 
trary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where 
every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and 
would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Some- 
times it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. 
Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found 
angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. 

Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and 
Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative govern- 
ment. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating 
havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations 
of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our de- 
scendents to the hundredth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due 
sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of 
our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting 
not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a 
benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of 
them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; 
acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dis- 
pensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater 
happiness hereafter— with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make 
us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens— a 
wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one 
another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of in- 
dustry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the 
bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary 
to close the circle of our felicities. 

About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend 
everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what 
I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those 
which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the 
narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its 
limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, 
religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, 
entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all 
their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns 
and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of 
the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor 
of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election 
by the people— a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 53 

sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute 
acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, 
from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent 
of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the 
first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the 
civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor 
may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preser- 
vation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as 
its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at 
the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and 
freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by 
juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation 
which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution 
and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been 
devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, 
the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of 
those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of 
alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone 
leads to peace, liberty, and safety. 

I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With 
experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this 
the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of 
imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor 
which bring him into it. Without pretentions to that high confidence you 
reposed in our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent 
services had entitled him to the first place in his country's love and destined 
for him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much con- 
fidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal administration of 
your affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, 
I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command 
a view of all the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, 
which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, 
who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts. The approba- 
tion implied by your suffrage is a great consolation to me for the past, and 
my future solicitude will be to retain the good opinion of those who have 
bestowed it in advance, to conciliate that of others by doing them all the 
good in my power, and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of 
all. 

Relying, then, on the patronage of your good will, I advance with obedience 
to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much 
better choice it is in your power to make. And may that Infinite Power which 
rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best, and give 
them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity. 



Basis of the Senate 
DANIEL WEBSTER 



Born, Salisbury, New Hampshire, January 18, 1782; 
died, Marshfield, Massachusetts, October 24, 1852. 
Graduate of Dartmouth College. Studied law in Boston, 
practiced in New Hampshire until 1816, when he moved 
to Boston. A Federalist, he served New Hampshire in 
United States House of Representatives, 1812-1816. After 
1816 he became a foremost constitutional lawyer and 
an orator of national rank. Sent to Congress from Massa- 
chusetts in 1823 and to United States Senate, 1827. In 
1836 and 1840 he sought unsuccessfully the Whig 
nomination for the Presidency. Secretary of State in the 
Harrison-Tyler administrations until 1843. Served in 
United States Senate, 1844-1850. Secretary of State, 
1850-1852. Webster's political career is identified with 
the conservative tradition and political parties, supremacy 
of the federal Constitution, and national unity; his greatest 
orations are expressive of these commitments. 



/know not, Sir, whether it be probable that any opinions 
or votes of mine are ever likely to be of more per- 
manent importance, than those which I may give in the discharge of my 
duties in this body. And of the questions which may arise here, I anticipate 
no one of greater consequence than the present. I ask leave, therefore, to sub- 
mit a few remarks to the consideration of the committee. 

Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, December 15, 1820, on the resolution 
to divide the Commonwealth into districts for choosing Senators according to popula- 
tion. The Works of Daniel Webster, 13th ed. (Boston: Little, Brown and Com- 
pany, 1864), III, pp. 8-25. 

54 



DANIEL WEBSTER 55 

The subject before us is the manner of constituting the legislative depart- 
ment of government. We have already decided that the legislative power shall 
exist as it has heretofore existed, in two separate and distinct branches, a 
Senate and a House of Representatives. We propose also, at least I have 
heard no intimation of a contrary opinion, that these branches shall, in form, 
possess a negative on each other. I presume I may also take it for granted, that 
the members of both these houses are to be chosen annually. The immediate 
question now under discussion is, In what manner shall the senators be 
elected? They are to be chosen in districts; but shall they be chosen in pro- 
portion to the number of inhabitants in each district, or in proportion to the 
taxable property of each district, or, in other words, in proportion to the part 
which each district bears in the public burdens of the State? The latter is the 
existing provision of the constitution; and to this I give my support. 

The resolution of the honorable member from Roxbury proposes to divide 
the State into certain legislative districts, and to choose a given number of 
senators, and a given number of representatives, in each district, in proportion 
to population. This I understand. It is a simple and plain system. The 
honorable member from Pittsfield and the honorable member from Worcester 
support the first part of this proposition, that is to say, that part which pro- 
vides for the choice of senators according to population, without explaining 
entirely their views as to the latter part, relative to the choice of representa- 
tives. They insist that the questions are distinct, and capable of a separate 
consideration and decision. I confess myself, Sir, unable to view the subject 
in that light. It seems to me, there is an essential propriety in considering 
the questions together; and in forming our opinions of them, as parts respec- 
tively of one legislative system. The legislature is one great machine of gov- 
ernment, not two machines. The two houses are its parts, and its utility will, 
as it seems to me, depend not merely on the materials of these parts, or their 
separate construction, but on their accommodation, also, and adaptation to 
each other. Their balanced and regulated movement, when united, is that 
which is expected to insure safety to the State; and who can give any opinion 
on this, without first seeing the construction of both, and considering how 
they are formed and arranged with respect to their mutual relation? I cannot 
imagine, therefore, how the member from Worcester should think it uncandid 
to inquire of him, since he supports this mode of choosing senators, what 
mode he proposes for the choice of representatives. 

It has been said that the constitution, as it now stands, gives more than 
an equal and proper number of senators to the county of Suffolk. I hope I 
may be thought to contend for the general principle, without being influenced 
by any regard to its local application. I do not inquire whether the senators 
whom this principle brings into the government will come from the 
county of Suffolk, from the valley of Housatonic, or the extremity of Cape 



56 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

Cod. I wish to look only to the principle; and as I believe that to be sound 
and salutary, I shall give my vote in favor of maintaining it. 

In my opinion, Sir, there are two questions before the committee. The 
first is, Shall the legislative department be constructed with any other 
check than such as arises simply from dividing the members of this depart- 
ment into two houses? The second is, If such other and further check 
ought to exist, in what manner shall it be created? 

If the two houses are to be chosen in the manner proposed by the resolu- 
tions of the member from Roxbury, there is obviously no other check or 
control than a division into separate chambers. The members of both houses 
are to be chosen at the same time, by the same electors, in the same districts, 
and for the same term of office. They will of course all be actuated by the 
same feelings and interests. Whatever motives may at the moment exist to 
elect particular members of one house, will operate equally on the choice 
of the members of the other. There is so little of real utility in this mode, that, 
if nothing more be done, it would be more expedient to choose all the 
members of the legislature, without distinction, simply as members of the 
legislature, and to make the division into two houses, either by lot or 
otherwise, after these members thus chosen should have come up to the 
capital. 

I understand the reason of checks and balances, in the legislative power, 
to arise from the truth, that, in representative governments, that department 
is the leading and predominating power; and if its will may be at any time 
suddenly and hastily expressed, there is great danger that it may overthrow 
all other powers. Legislative bodies naturally feel strong, because they are 
numerous, and because they consider themselves as the immediate repre- 
sentatives of the people. They depend on public opinion to sustain their 
measures, and they undoubtedly possess great means of influencing public 
opinion. With all the guards which can be raised by constitutional pro- 
visions, we are not likely to be too well secured against cases of improper, 
or hasty, or intemperate legislation. It may be observed, also, that the 
executive power, so uniformly the object of jealousy to republics, has in 
the States of this Union been deprived of the greater part both of its im- 
portance and its splendor, by the establishment of the general government. 
While the States possessed the power of making war and peace, and main- 
tained military forces by their own authority, the power of the State execu- 
tives was very considerable and respectable. It might then even be an object, 
in some cases, of a just and warrantable jealousy. But a great change has 
been wrought. The care of foreign relations, the maintenance of armies 
and navies, and their command and control, have devolved on another 
government. Even the power of appointment, so exclusively, one would 
think, an executive power, is, in very many of the States, held or controlled 



DANIEL WEBSTER 57 

by the legislature; that department either making the principal appointments 
itself, or else surrounding the chief executive magistrate with a council of 
its own election, possessing a negative upon his nominations. 

Nor has it been found easy, nor in all cases possible, to preserve the 
judicial department from the progress of legislative encroachment. Indeed, 
in some of the States, all judges are appointed by the legislature; in others, 
although appointed by the executive, they are removable at the pleasure of 
the legislature. In all, the provision for their maintenance is necessarily to be 
made by the legislature. As if Montesquieu had never demonstrated the 
necessity of separating the departments of governments; as if Mr. Adams had 
not done the same thing, with equal ability, and more clearness, in his 
Defence of the American Constitutions; as if the sentiments of Mr. Hamilton 
and Mr. Madison were already forgotten; we see, all around us, a tendency 
to extend the legislative power over the proper sphere of the other depart- 
ments. And as the legislature, from the very nature of things, is the most 
powerful department, it becomes necessary to provide, in the mode of forming 
it, some check which shall insure deliberation and caution in its measures. 
If all legislative power rested in one house, it is very problematical whether 
any proper independence could be given, either to the executive or the 
judiciary. Experience does not speak encouragingly on that point. If we 
look through the several constitutions of the States, we shall perceive that 
generally the departments are most distinct and independent where the 
legislature is composed of two houses, with equal authority, and mutual 
checks. If all legislative power be in one popular body, all other power, 
sooner or later, will be there also. 

I wish, now, Sir, to correct a most important mistake in the manner in 
which this question has been stated. It has been said, that we propose to 
give to property, merely as such, a control over the people, numerically 
considered. But this I take not to be at all the true nature of the proposition. 
The Senate is not to be a check on the people, but on the House of Repre- 
sentatives. It is the case of an authority, given to one agent, to check or 
control the acts of another. The people, having conferred on the House of 
Representatives powers which are great, and, from their nature, liable to 
abuse, require, for their own security, another house, which shall possess 
an effectual negative on the first. This does not limit the power of the 
people; but only the authority of their agents. It is not a restraint on their 
rights, but a restraint on that power which they have delegated. It limits 
the authority of agents in making laws to bind their principals. And if 
it be wise to give one agent the power of checking or controlling another, 
it is equally wise, most manifestly, that there should be some difference of 
character, sentiment, feeling, or origin in that agent who is to possess this 
control. Otherwise, it is not at all probable that the control will ever be 



58 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

exercised. To require the consent of two agents to the validity of an act, 
and yet to appoint agents so similar, in all respects, as to create a moral 
certainty that what one does the other will do also, would be inconsistent, 
and nugatory. There can be no effectual control, without some difference 
of origin, or character, or interest, or feeling, or sentiment. And the great 
question in this country has been, where to find, or how to create, this 
difference, in governments entirely elective and popular. 

Various modes have been attempted in various States. In some, a difference 
of qualification has been required in the persons to be elected. This obviously 
produces little or no effect. All property qualification, even the highest, is 
so low, as to produce no exclusion, to any extent, in any of the States. 
A difference of age in the persons elected is sometimes required; but this 
is found to be equally unimportant. Neither has it happened, that any 
consideration of the relative rank of the members of the two houses has had 
much effect on the character of their constituent members. Both in the 
State governments, and in the United States government, we daily see 
persons elected into the House of Representatives who have been members 
of the Senate. Public opinion does not attach so much weight and impor- 
tance to the distinction, as to lead individuals greatly to regard it. In some 
of the States, a different sort of qualification in the electors is required for 
the two houses; and this is probably the most proper and efficient check. But 
such has not been the provision in this Commonwealth, and there are 
strong objections to introducing it. In other cases, again, there is a double 
election for senators; electors being first chosen, who elect senators. Such 
is the case in Maryland, where the senators are elected for five years, by 
electors appointed in equal numbers by the counties; a mode of election 
not unlike that of choosing representatives in the British Parliament for 
the boroughs of Scotland. In this State, the qualification of the voters is 
the same for the two houses, and there is no essential difference in that of 
the persons chosen. But, in apportioning the Senate to the different districts 
of the State, the present constitution assigns to each district a number 
proportioned to its public taxes. Whether this be the best mode of producing 
a difference in the construction of the two houses, is not now the question; 
but the question is, whether this be better than no mode. 

The gentleman from Roxbury called for authority on this subject. He 
asked, what writer of reputation had approved the principle for which 
we contend. I should hope, Sir, that, even if this call could not be answered, 
it would not necessarily follow that the principle should be expunged. 
Governments are instituted for practical benefit, not for subjects of specula- 
tive reasoning merely. The best authority for the support of a particular 
principle or provision in government is experience; and of all experience, 
our own, if it have been long enough to give the principle a fair trial, should 



DANIEL WEBSTER 59 

be most decisive. This provision has existed for forty years, and while so 
many gentlemen contend that it is wrong in theory, no one has shown that 
it has been either injurious or inconvenient in practice. No one pretends 
that it has caused a bad law to be enacted, or a good one to be rejected. To 
call on us, then, to strike out this provision, because we should be able to 
find no authority for it in any book on government, would seem to be like 
requiring a mechanic to abandon the use of an implement, which had always 
answered all the purposes designed by it, because he could find no model 
of it in the patent-office. 

But, Sir, I take the yrincifle to be well established, by writers of the 
greatest authority. In the first place, those who have treated of natural law 
have maintained, as a principle of that law, that, as far as the object of society 
is the protection of something in which the members possess unequal shares, 
it is just that the weight of each person in the common councils should 
bear a relation and proportion to his interest. Such is the sentiment of 
Grotius, and he refers, in support of it, to several institutions among the 
ancient states. 

Those authors who have written more particularly on the' subject of 
political institutions have, many of them, maintained similar sentiments. 
Not, indeed, that every man's power should be in exact proportion to his 
property, but that, in a general sense, and in a general form, property, as 
such, should have its weight and influence in political arrangement. Mon- 
tesquieu speaks with approbation of the early Roman regulation, made by 
Servius Tullius, by which the people were distributed into classes, according 
to their property, and the public burdens apportioned to each individual 
according to the degree of power which he possessed in the government. By 
this regulation, he observes, some bore with the greatness of their tax because 
of their proportionable participation in power and credit; others consoled 
themselves for the smallness of their power and credit by the smallness 
of their tax. One of the most ingenious of political writers is Mr. Harrington, 
an author not now read so much as he deserves. It is his leading object, in 
his Oceana, to prove, that power naturally and necessarily follows property. 
He maintains that a government founded on property is legitimately founded; 
and that a government founded on the disregard of property is founded in 
injustice, and can only be maintained by military force. "If one man," 
says he, "be sole landlord, like the Grand Seignior, his empire is absolute. 
If a few possess the land, this makes the Gothic or feudal constitution. If 
the whole yeofle be landlords, then is it a commonwealth." "It is strange," 
says an ingenious person in the last century, "that Harrington should be 
the first man to find out so evident and demonstrable a truth as that of 
property being the true basis and measure of power." In truth, he was not 
the first. The idea is as old as political science itself. It may be found in 



6o 



THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 



Aristotle, Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, and other writers. Harrington 
seems, however, to be the first writer who has illustrated and expanded the 
principle, and given to it the effect and prominence which justly belong to 
it. To this sentiment, Sir, I entirely agree. It seems to me to be plain, that, 
in the absence of military force, political power naturally and necessarily 
goes into the hands which hold the property. In my judgment, therefore, 
a republican form of government rests, not more on political constitutions, 
than on those laws which regulate the descent and transmission of property. 

If the nature of our institutions be to found government on property, and 
that it should look to those who hold property for its protection, it is en- 
tirely just that property should have its due weight and consideration in 
political arrangements. Life and personal liberty are no doubt to be protected 
by law; but property is also to be protected by law, and is the fund out of 
which the means for protecting life and liberty are usually furnished. We 
have no experience that teaches us that any other rights are safe where 
property is not safe. Confiscation and plunder are generally, in revolutionary 
commotions, not far before banishment, imprisonment, and death. It would 
be monstrous to give even the name of government to any association in 
which the rights of property should not be completely secured. The disastrous 
revolutions which the world has witnessed, those political thunder-storms 
and earthquakes which have shaken the pillars of society to their very 
deepest foundations, have been revolutions against property. Since the 
honorable member from Quincy* has alluded on this occasion to the history 
of the ancient states, it would be presumption in me to dwell upon it. It 
may be truly said, however, I think, that Rome herself is an example of the 
mischievous influence of the popular power when disconnected with property 
and in a corrupt age. It is true the arm of Caesar prostrated her liberty; 
but Caesar found his support within her very walls. Those who were 
profligate and necessitous, and factious and desperate, and capable, therefore, 
of being influenced by bribes and largesses, which were distributed with 
the utmost prodigality, outnumbered and outvoted, in the tribes and cen- 
turies, the substantial, sober, prudent, and faithful citizens. Property was 
in the hands of one description of men, and power in those of another; 
and the balance of the constitution was destroyed. Let it never be forgotten 
that it was the popular magistrates, elevated to office where the bad out- 
numbered the good,— where those who had not a stake in the commonwealth, 
by clamor and noise and numbers, drowned the voice of those who had,— 
that laid the neck of Rome at the feet of her conqueror. When Caesar, 
manifesting a disposition to march his army against the capital, approached 
that little stream which has become so memorable from its association with 
his history, a decree was proposed in the Senate declaring him a public 

* Ex-President Adams. 



DANIEL WEBSTER 6 1 

enemy if he did not disband his troops. To this decree the popular tribunes, 
the sworn protectors of the people, interposed their negative; and thus 
opened the high road to Rome, and the gates of the city herself, to the 
approach of her conqueror. 

The English Revolution of 1688 was a revolution in favor of property, 
as well as of other rights. It was brought about by the men of property for 
their security; and our own immortal Revolution was undertaken, not to 
shake or plunder property, but to protect it. The acts of which the country 
complained were such as violated rights of property. An immense majority 
of all those who had an interest in the soil were in favor of the Revolution; 
and they carried it through, looking to its results for the security of their 
possessions. It was the property of the frugal yeomanry of New England, 
hard earned, but freely given, that enabled her to act her proper part and 
perform her full duty in achieving the independence of the country. 

I would not be thought, Mr. Chairman, to be among those who underrate 
the value of military service. My heart beats, I trust, as responsive as any 
one's, to a soldier's claim for honor and renown. It has ever been my opinion, 
however, that while celebrating the military achievements of our country- 
men in the Revolutionary contest, we have not always done equal justice to 
the merits and the sufferings of those who sustained, on their property, 
and on their means of subsistence, the great burden of the war. Any one, 
who has had occasion to be acquainted with the records of the New England 
towns, knows well how to estimate those merits and those sufferings. Nobler 
records of patriotism exist nowhere. Nowhere can there be found higher 
proofs of a spirit that was ready to hazard all, to pledge all, to sacrifice all, 
in the cause of the country. Instances were not infrequent, in which small 
freeholders parted with their last hoof, and the last measure of corn from 
their granaries, to supply provisions for the troops, and hire service for 
the ranks. The voice of Otis and of Adams in Faneuil Hall found its full 
and true echo in the little councils of the interior towns; and if within 
the Continental Congress patriotism shone more conspicuously, it did not 
there exist more truly, nor burn more fervently; it did not render the day 
more anxious, or the night more sleepless; it sent up no more ardent prayer 
to God, for succor; and it put forth in no greater degree the fulness of its 
effort, and the energy of its whole soul and spirit, in the common cause, 
than it did in the small assemblies of the town. I cannot, therefore, Sir, 
agree that it is in favor of society, or in favor of the people, to constitute 
government with an entire disregard to those who bear the public burdens 
in times of great exigency. This question has been argued as if it were 
proposed only to give an advantage to a few rich men. I do not so understand 
it. I consider it as giving property, generally, a representation in the Senate, 
both because it is just that it should have such representation, and because 



62 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

it is a convenient mode of providing that check which the constitution of the 
legislature requires. I do not say that such check might not be found in 
some other provision; but this is the provision already established, and it 
is, in my opinion, a just and proper one. 

I will beg leave to ask, Sir, whether property may not be said to deserve 
this portion of respect and power in the government? It pays, at this 
moment, I think, five sixths of all the public taxes; one sixth only being 
raised on persons. Not only, Sir, do these taxes support those burdens which 
all governments require, but we have, in New England, from early times 
held property to be subject to another great public use; I mean the support 
of schools. Sir, property, and the power which the law exercises over it for 
the purpose of instruction, are the basis of the system. It is entitled to the 
respect and protection of government, because, in a very vital respect, it 
aids and sustains government. The honorable member from Worcester, in 
contending for the admission of the mere popular principle in all branches 
of the government, told us that our system rested on the intelligence of the 
community. He told us truly. But allow me, Sir, to ask the honorable 
gentleman, what, but property, supplies the means of that intelligence? 
What living fountain feeds this ever-flowing, ever-refreshing, ever-fertilizing 
stream of public instruction and general intelligence? If we take away from 
the towns the power of assessing taxes on property, will the school-houses 
remain open? If we deny to the poor the benefit which they now derive 
from the property of the rich, will their children remain on their forms, 
or will they not, rather, be in the streets, in idleness and in vice? 

I might ask again, Sir, how is it with religious instruction? Do not the 
towns and parishes raise money by vote of the majority, assessed on property, 
for the maintenance of religious worship? Are not the poor as well as the 
rich benefited by the means of attending on public worship, and do they 
not equally with the rich possess a voice and vote in the choice of the 
minister, and in all other parish concerns? Does any man, Sir, wish to 
try the experiment of striking out of the constitution the regard which it has 
hitherto maintained for property, and of foregoing also the extraordinary 
benefit which society among us for near two centuries has derived from 
laying the burden of religious and literary instruction of all classes upon 
property? Does any man wish to see those only worshipping God who are 
able to build churches and maintain ministers for themselves, and those 
children only educated whose parents possess the means of educating them? 
Sir, it is as unwise as it is unjust to make property an object of jealousy. 
Instead of being, in any just sense, a popular course, such a course would 
be most injurious and destructive to the best interests of the people. The 
nature of our laws sufficiently secures us against any dangerous accumula- 
tions; and, used and diffused as we have it, the whole operation of property 



DANIEL WEBSTER 63 

is in the highest degree useful, both to the rich and to the poor. I rejoice, 
Sir, that every man in this community may call all property his own, so far 
as he has occasion for it, to furnish for himself and his children the blessings 
of religious instruction and the elements of knowledge. This heavenly and 
this earthly light he is entitled to by the fundamental laws. It is every poor 
man's undoubted birthright, it is the great blessing which this constitution 
has secured to him, it is his solace in life, and it may well be his consolation 
in death, that his country stands pledged, by the faith which it has 
plighted to all its citizens, to protect his children from ignorance, barbarism, 
and vice. 

I will now proceed to ask, Sir, whether we have not seen, and whether 
we do not at this moment see, the advantage and benefit of giving security 
to property, by this and all other reasonable and just provisions. The con- 
stitution has stood on its present basis forty years. Let me ask, What State 
has been more distinguished for wise and wholesome legislation? I speak, 
Sir, without the partiality of a native, and also without intending the 
compliment of a stranger; and I ask, What example have we had of better 
legislation? No violent measures affecting property have been' attempted. 
Stop laws, suspension laws, tender laws, all the tribe of these arbitrary and 
tyrannical interferences between creditor and debtor, which, wheresoever 
practiced, generally end in the ruin of both, are strangers to our statute-book. 
An upright and intelligent judiciary has come in aid of wholesome legisla- 
tion; and general security for public and private rights has been the result. 
I do not say that this is peculiar, I do not say that others have not done 
as well. It is enough that, in these respects, we shall be satisfied that we are 
not behind our neighbors. No doubt, Sir, there are benefits of every kind, 
and of great value, in an organization of government, both in legislative and 
judicial administration, which well secures the rights of property; and we 
should find it so, by unfortunate experience, should that character be lost. 
There are millions of personal property now in this Commonwealth which 
are easily transferable, and would be instantly transferred elsewhere, if 
any doubt existed of its entire security. I do not know how much of this 
stability of government, and of the general respect for it, may be fairly 
imputed to this particular mode of organizing the Senate. It has, no doubt, 
had some effect. It indicates a respect for the rights of property, and may 
have operated on opinion as well as upon measures. Now to strike out and 
obliterate it, as it seems to me, would be in a high degree unwise and 
improper. 

As to the right of apportioning senators upon this principle, I do not 
understand how there can be a question about it. All government is a modifica- 
tion of general principles and general truths, with a view to practical utility. 
Personal liberty, for instance, is a clear right, and is to be provided for; but 



64 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

it is not a clearer right than the right of property, though it may be more 
important. It is, therefore, entitled to protection. But property is also to be 
protected; and when it is remembered how great a portion of the people 
of this State possess property, I cannot understand how its protection or 
its influence is hostile to their rights and privileges. For these reasons, Sir, 
I am in favor of maintaining that check, in the constitution of the legisla- 
ture, which has so long existed there. 

[In the remainder of his speech— less than one-third of the text— Webster 
deals primarily with local issues as they bear on the resolution before the 
convention.] 



The Office of the People in Art, 
Government, and Religion 

GEORGE BANCROFT 



Born, Worcester, Massachusetts, October 3, 1800; died, 
Washington, D.C., January ly, 1891. Graduated from 
Harvard University, received a Ph.D. degree from the 
University of Gottingen. Teacher and author of 10-volume 
History of the United States. An active Jacksonian 
Democrat, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the 
governorship of Massachusetts. Secretary of Navy, 
1 845- 1 846. United States Minister to Great Britain, 
1846-1849; United States Minister to Germany, 1867- 
1874. Throughout his years of public service, he was 
tireless in his research, writing, and public speaking. 



The material world does not change in its masses or 
in its powers. The stars shine with no more lustre 
than when they first sang together in the glory of their birth. The flowers 
that gemmed the fields and the forests, before America was discovered, now 
bloom around us in their season. The sun that shone on Homer shines on 
us in unchanging lustre. The bow that beamed on the patriarch still glitters 
in the clouds. Nature is the same. For her no new forces are generated; 
no new capacities are discovered. The earth turns on its axis, and perfects 
its revolutions, and renews its seasons, without increase or advancement. 

The Adelphi Society, Williamstown College, August [?], 1835. George Bancroft, 
Literary and Historical Miscellanies (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1855), pp. 
408-435. 

65 



66 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

But a like passive destiny does not attach to the inhabitants of the earth. 
For them the expectations of social improvement are no delusion; the hopes 
of philanthropy are more than a dream. The five senses do not constitute 
the whole inventory of our sources of knowledge. They are the organs by 
which thought connects itself with the external universe; but the power 
of thought is not merged in the exercise of its instruments. We have func- 
tions which connect us with heaven, as well as organs which set us in 
relation with earth. We have not merely the senses opening to us the 
external world, but an internal sense, which places us in connexion with 
the world of intelligence and the decrees of God. 

There is a spirit in man: not in the privileged few; not in those of us 
only who by the favor of Providence have been nursed in public schools: it 
is in man: it is the attribute of the race. The spirit, which is the guide to 
truth, is the gracious gift to each member of the human family. 

Reason exists within every breast. I mean not that faculty which deduces 
inferences from the experience of the senses, but that higher faculty, which 
from the infinite treasures of its own consciousness, originates truth, and 
assents to it by the force of intuitive evidence; that faculty which raises us 
beyond the control of time and space, and gives us faith in things eternal 
and invisible. There is not the difference between one mind and another, 
which the pride of philosophers might conceive. To them no faculty is 
conceded, which does not belong to the meanest of their countrymen. In 
them there can not spring up a truth, which does not equally have its germ 
in every mind. They have not the power of creation; they can but reveal 
what God has implanted in every breast. 

The intellectual functions, by which relations are perceived, are the com- 
mon endowments of the race. The differences are apparent, not real. The 
eye in one person may be dull, in another quick, in one distorted, and in 
another tranquil and clear; yet the relation of the eye to light is in all men 
the same. Just so judgment may be liable in individual minds to the bias 
of passion, and yet its relation to truth is immutable, and is universal. 

In questions of practical duty, conscience is God's umpire, whose light 
illumines every heart. There is nothing in books, which had not first, and 
has not still its life within us. Religion itself is a dead letter, wherever its 
truths are not renewed in the soul. Individual conscience may be corrupted 
by interest, or debauched by pride, yet the rule of morality is distinctly 
marked; its harmonies are to the mind like music to the ear; and the moral 
judgment, when carefully analyzed and referred to its principles, is always 
founded in right. The eastern superstition, which bids its victims prostrate 
themselves before the advancing car of their idols, springs from a noble root, 
and is but a melancholy perversion of that self-devotion, which enables the 
Christian to bear the cross, and subject his personal passions to the will of 



GEORGE BANCROFT 67 

God. Immorality of itself never won to its support the inward voice; con- 
science, if questioned, never forgets to curse the guilty with the memory 
of sin, to cheer the upright with the meek tranquillity of approval. And this 
admirable power, which is the instinct of Deity, is the attribute of every 
man; it knocks at the palace gate, it dwells in the meanest hovel. Duty, like 
death, enters every abode, and delivers its message. Conscience, like reason 
and judgment, is universal. 

That the moral affections are planted every where, needs only to be 
asserted to be received. The savage mother loves her offspring with all 
the fondness that a mother can know. Beneath the odorous shade of the 
boundless forests of Chili, the native youth repeats the story of love as 
sincerely as it was ever chanted in the valley of Vaucluse. The affections of 
family are not the growth of civilization. The charities of life are scattered 
every where; enamelling the vales of human being, as the flowers paint 
the meadows. They are not the fruit of study, nor the privilege of refine- 
ment, but a natural instinct. 

Our age has seen a revolution in works of imagination. The poet has 
sought his theme in common life. Never is the genius of Scott more 
pathetic, than when, as in the Antiquary, he delineates the sorrows of a 
poor fisherman, or as in the Heart of Mid Lothian, he takes his heroine 
from a cottage. And even Wordsworth, the purest and most original poet of 
the day, in spite of the inveterate character of his political predilections, 
has thrown the light of genius on the walks of commonest life; he finds a 
lesson in every grave of the village churchyard; he discloses the boundless 
treasures of feeling in the peasant, the laborer and the artisan; the strolling 
peddler becomes, through his genius, a teacher of the sublimest morality; 
and the solitary wagoner, the lonely shepherd, even the feeble mother of 
an idiot boy, furnishes lessons in the reverence for Humanity. 



I speak for the universal diffusion of human powers, not of human at- 
tainments; for the capacity for progress, not for the perfection of undisciplined 
instincts. The fellowship which we should cherish with the race, receives 
the Comanche warrior and Caffre within the pale of equality. Their func- 
tions may not have been exercised, but they exist. Immure a person in a 
dungeon; as he comes to the light of day, his vision seems incapable of 
performing its office. Does that destroy your conviction in the relation 
between the eye and light? The rioter over his cups resolves to eat and drink 
and be merry; he forgets his spiritual nature in his obedience to the senses; 
but does that destroy the relation between conscience and eternity? "What 
ransom shall we give?" exclaimed the senators of Rome to the savage Attila. 
"Give," said the barbarian, "all your gold and jewels, your costly furniture 



68 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

and treasures, and set free every slave." "Ah," replied the degenerate Romans, 
"what then will be left to us?" "I leave you your souls," replied the unlettered 
invader from the steppes of Asia, who had learnt in the wilderness to value 
the immortal mind, and to despise the servile herd, that esteemed only their 
fortunes, and had no true respect for themselves. You cannot discover a 
tribe of men, but you also find the charities of life, and the proofs of spiritual 
existence. Behold the ignorant Algonquin deposit a bow and quiver by the 
side of the departed warrior; and recognise his faith in immortality. See the 
Comanche chieftain, in the heart of our continent, inflict on himself severest 
penance; and reverence his confession of the needed atonement for sin. 
The Barbarian who roams our western prairies has like passions and like 
endowments with ourselves. He bears within him the instinct of Deity; the 
consciousness of a spiritual nature; the love of beauty; the rule of morality. 
And shall we reverence the dark-skinned Caffre? Shall we respect the 
brutal Hottentot? You may read the right answer written on every heart. 
It bids me not despise the sable hunter, that gathers a livelihood in the 
forests of Southern Africa. All are men. When we know the Hottentot 
better, we shall despise him less. 

ii 

If it be true, that the gifts of mind and heart are universally diffused, if 
the sentiment of truth, justice, love, and beauty exists in every one, then 
it follows, as a necessary consequence, that the common judgment in taste, 
politics, and religion, is the highest authority on earth, and the nearest 
possible approach to an infallible decision. From the consideration of in- 
dividual powers I turn to the action of the human mind in masses. 

If reason is a universal faculty, the universal decision is the nearest 
criterion of truth. The common mind winnows opinions; it is the sieve which 
separates error from certainty. The exercise by many of the same faculty on 
the same subject would naturally lead to the same conclusions. But if not, 
the very differences of opinion that arise prove the supreme judgment of 
the general mind. Truth is one. It never contradicts itself. One truth cannot 
contradict another truth. Hence truth is a bond of union. But error not 
only contradicts truth, but may contradict itself; so that there may be many 
errors, and each at variance with the rest. Truth is therefore of necessity 
an element of harmony; error as necessarily an element of discord. Thus 
there can be no continuing universal judgment but a right one. Men 
cannot agree in an absurdity; neither can they agree in a falsehood. 

If wrong opinions have often been cherished by the masses, the cause 
always lies in the complexity of the ideas presented. Error finds its way 
into the soul of a nation, only through the channel of truth. It is to a truth 
that men listen; and if they accept error also, it is only because the error 



GEORGE BANCROFT 69 

is for the time so closely interwoven with the truth, that the one cannot 
readily be separated from the other. 

Unmixed error can have no existence in the public mind. Wherever 
you see men clustering together to form a party, you may be sure that 
however much error may be there, truth is there also. Apply this principle 
boldly; for it contains a lesson of candor, and a voice of encouragement. There 
never was a school of philosophy, nor a clan in the realm of opinion, but 
carried along with it some important truth. And therefore every sect that has 
ever flourished has benefited Humanity; for the errors of a sect pass away 
and are forgotten; its truths are received into the common inheritance. To 
know the seminal thought of every prophet and leader of a sect, is to gather 
all the wisdom of mankind. 

By heaven! there should not be a seer, who left 
The world one doctrine, but I'd task his lore, 
And commune with his spirit. All the truth 
Of all the tongues of earth, I'd have them all, 
Had I the powerful spell to raise their ghosts. 

The sentiment of beauty, as it exists in the human mind, is the criterion 
in works of art, inspires the conceptions of genius, and exercises a final 
judgment on its productions. For who are the best judges in matters of 
taste? Do you think the cultivated individual? Undoubtedly not; but the 
collective mind. The public is wiser than the wisest critic. In Athens, the 
arts were carried to perfection, when "the fierce democracie" was in the 
ascendant; the temple of Minerva and the works of Phidias were planned 
and perfected to please the common people. When Greece yielded to tyrants, 
her genius for excellence in art expired; or rather, the purity of taste dis- 
appeared; because the artist then endeavored to gratify a patron, and therefore, 
humored his caprice; while before he had endeavored to delight the race. 



Demosthenes of old formed himself to the perfection of eloquence by 
means of addresses to the crowd. The great comic poet of Greece, emphatically 
the poet of the vulgar mob, is distinguished above all others for the in- 
comparable graces of his diction; and it is related of one of the most skilful 
writers in the Italian, that when inquired of where he had learned the purity 
and nationality of his style, he replied, from listening to the country people, 
as they brought their produce to market. 

At the revival of letters a distinguishing feature of the rising literature 
was the employment of the dialect of the vulgar. Dante used the language 
of the populace and won immortality; WicklirTe, Luther, and at a later day 
Descartes, each employed his mother tongue, and carried truth directly to all 



70 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

who were familiar with its accents. Every beneficent revolution in letters 
has the character of popularity; every great reform among authors has sprung 
from the power of the people in its influence on the development and 
activity of mind. 

The same influence continues unimpaired. Scott, in spite of his reverence 
for the aristocracy, spurned a drawing-room reputation; the secret of Byron's 
superiority lay in part in the agreement which existed between his muse 
and the democratic tendency of the age. German literature is almost entirely 
a popular creation. It was fostered by no monarch; it was dandled by no 
aristocracy. It was plebian in its origin, and therefore manly in its results. 

in 

In like manner the best government rests on the people and not on the 
few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public 
opinion and not on authority; because the munificent Author of our being 
has conferred the gifts of mind upon every member of the human race without 
distinction of outward circumstances. Whatever of other possessions may 
be engrossed, mind asserts its own independence. Lands, estates, the produce 
of mines, the prolific abundance of the seas, may be usurped by a privileged 
class. Avarice, assuming the form of ambitious power, may grasp realm 
after realm, subdue continents, compass the earth in its schemes of ag- 
grandizement, and sigh after other worlds; but mind eludes the power of 
appropriation; it exists only in its own individuality; it is a property which 
cannot be confiscated and cannot be torn away; it laughs at chains; it bursts 
from imprisonment; it defies monopoly. A government of equal rights must, 
therefore, rest upon mind; not wealth, not brute force, the sum of the moral 
intelligence of the community should rule the State. Prescription can no 
more assume to be a valid plea for political injustice; society studies to 
eradicate established abuses, and to bring social institutions and laws into 
harmony with moral right; not dismayed by the natural and necessary 
imperfections of all human effort, and not giving way to despair, because 
every hope does not at once ripen into fruit. 

The public happiness is the true object of legislation, and can be secured 
only by the masses of mankind themselves awakening to the knowledge 
and the care of their own interests. Our free institutions have reversed 
the false and ignoble distinctions between men; and refusing to gratify the 
pride of caste, have acknowledged the common mind to be the true material 
for a commonwealth. Every thing has hitherto been done for the happy 
few. It is not possible to endow an aristocracy with greater benefits than 
they have already enjoyed; there is no room to hope that individuals will 
be more highly gifted or more fully developed than the greatest sages of 
past times. The world can advance only through the culture of the moral 
and intellectual powers of the people. To accomplish this end by means 



GEORGE BANCROFT 7 1 

of the people themselves, is the highest purpose of government. If it be the 
duty of the individual to strive after a perfection like the perfection of 
God, how much more ought a nation to be the image of Deity. The com- 
mon mind is the true Parian marble, fit to be wrought into likeness to a 
God. The duty of America is to secure the culture and the happiness of 
the masses by their reliance on themselves. 

The absence of the prejudices of the old world leaves us here the op- 
portunity of consulting independent truth; and man is left to apply the 
instinct of freedom to every social relation and public interest. We have 
approached so near to nature, that we can hear her gentlest whispers; we 
have made Humanity our lawgiver and our oracle; and, therefore, the nation 
receives, vivifies and applies principles, which in Europe the wisest accept 
with distrust. Freedom of mind and of conscience, freedom of the seas, free- 
dom of industry, equality of franchises, each great truth is firmly grasped, 
comprehended and enforced; for the multitude is neither rash nor fickle. 
In truth, it is less fickle than those who profess to be its guides. Its natural 
dialectics surpass the logic of the schools. Political action has never been 
so consistent and so unwavering, as when it results from a feeling or a 
principle, diffused through society. The people is firm and tranquil in its 
movements, and necessarily acts with moderation, because it becomes but 
slowly impregnated with new ideas; and effects no changes, except in har- 
mony with the knowledge which it has acquired. Besides, where it is 
permanently possessed of power, there exists neither the occasion nor the 
desire for frequent change. It is not the parent of tumult; sedition is bred 
in the lap of luxury, and its chosen emissaries are the beggared spendthrift 
and the impoverished libertine. The government by the people is in very 
truth the strongest government in the world. Discarding the implements 
of terror, it dares to rule by moral force, and has its citadel in the heart. 

Such is the political system which rests on reason, reflection, and the 
free expression of deliberate choice. There may be those who scoff at the 
suggestion, that the decision of the whole is to be preferred to the judgment 
of the enlightened few. They say in their hearts that the masses are ignorant; 
that farmers know nothing of legislation; that mechanics should not quit 
their workshops to join in forming public opinion. But true political science 
does indeed venerate the masses. It maintains, not as has been perversely 
asserted, that "the people can make right," but that the people can discern 
right. Individuals are but shadows, too often engrossed by the pursuit of 
shadows; the race is immortal : individuals are of limited sagacity; the common 
mind is infinite in its experience: individuals are languid and blind; the 
many are ever wakeful: individuals are corrupt; the race has been redeemed: 
individuals are time-serving; the masses are fearless: individuals may be false; 
the masses are ingenuous and sincere: individuals claim the divine sanction 
of truth for the deceitful conceptions of their own fancies; the Spirit of God 



72 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

breathes through the combined intelligence of the people. Truth is not to 
be ascertained by the impulses of an individual; it emerges from the con- 
tradictions of personal opinions; it raises itself in majestic serenity above 
the strifes of parties and the conflict of sects; it acknowledges neither the 
solitary mind, nor the separate faction as its oracle; but owns as its only 
faithful interpreter the dictates of pure reason itself, proclaimed by the gen- 
eral voice of mankind. The decrees of the universal conscience are the 
nearest approach to the presence of God in the soul of man. 

Thus the opinion which we respect is, indeed, not the opinion of one or 
of a few, but the sagacity of the many. It is hard for the pride of cultivated 
philosophy to put its ear to the ground, and listen reverently to the voices 
of lowly humanity; yet the people collectively are wiser than the most 
gifted individual, for all his wisdom constitutes but a part of theirs. When 
the great sculptor of Greece was endeavoring to fashion the perfect model 
of beauty, he did not passively imitate the form of the loveliest woman of 
his age; but he gleaned the several lineaments of his faultless work from 
the many. And so it is, that a perfect judgment is the result of comparison, 
when error eliminates error, and truth is established by concurring witnesses. 
The organ of truth is the invisible decision of the unbiased world; she pleads 
before no tribunal but public opinion; she owns no safe interpreter but 
the common mind; she knows no court of appeals but the soul of humanity. 
It is when the multitude give counsel, that right purposes find safety; theirs 
is the fixedness that cannot be shaken; theirs is the understanding which 
exceeds in wisdom; theirs is the heart, of which the largeness is as the sand 
on the sea-shore. 

It is not by vast armies, by immense natural resources, by accumulations 
of treasure, that the greatest results in modern civilization have been ac- 
complished. The traces of the career of conquest pass away, hardly leaving 
a scar on the national intelligence. The famous battle grounds of victory 
are, most of them, comparatively indifferent to the human race; barren fields 
of blood, the scourges of their times, but affecting the social condition as 
little as the raging of a pestilence. Not one benevolent institution, not one 
ameliorating principle in the Roman state, was a voluntary concession of 
the aristocracy; each useful element was borrowed from the Democracies 
of Greece, or was a reluctant concession to the demands of the people. The 
same is true in modern political life. It is the confession of an enemy to 
Democracy, that "all the great and noble institutions of the world 

HAVE COME FROM POPULAR EFFORTS." 

It is the uniform tendency of the popular element to elevate and bless 
Humanity. The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in 
which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth 
and brute force; in other words, the measure of the progress of civilization 



GEORGE BANCROFT 73 

is the progress of the people. Every great object, connected with the benevo- 
lent exertions of the day, has reference to the culture of those powers which 
are alone the common inheritance. For this the envoys of religion cross 
seas, and visit remotest isles; for this the press in its freedom teems with 
the productions of maturest thought; for this the philanthropist plans new 
schemes of education; for this halls in every city and village are open to 
the public instructor. Not that we view with indifference the glorious efforts 
of material industry; the increase in the facility of internal intercourse; the 
accumulations of thrifty labor; the varied results of concentrated action. But 
even there it is mind that achieves the triumph. It is the genius of the 
architect that gives beauty to the work of human hands, and makes the 
temple, the dwelling, or the public edifice, an outward representation of 
the spirit of propriety and order. It is science that guides the blind zeal 
of cupidity to the construction of the vast channels of communication, which 
are fast binding the world into one family. And it is as a method of moral 
improvement, that these swifter means of intercourse derive their greatest 
value. Mind becomes universal property; the poem that is published on 
the soil of England, finds its response on the shores of lake Erie and the 
banks of the Missouri, and is admired near the sources of the Ganges. The 
defence of public liberty in our own halls of legislation penetrates the plains 
of Poland, is echoed along the mountains of Greece, and pierces the darkest 
night of eastern despotism. 

The universality of the intellectual and moral powers, and the necessity 
of their development for the progress of the race, proclaim the great doctrine 
of the natural right of every human being to moral and intellectual culture. 
It is the glory of our fathers to have established in their laws the equal 
claims of every child to the public care of its morals and its mind. From this 
principle we may deduce the universal right to leisure; that is, to time not 
appropriated to material purposes, but reserved for the culture of the moral 
affections and the mind. It does not tolerate the exclusive enjoyment of 
leisure by a privileged class; but defending the rights of labor, would suffer 
none to sacrifice the higher purposes of existence in unceasing toil for that 
which is not life. Such is the voice of nature; such the conscious claim of 
the human mind. The universe opens its pages to every eye; the music of 
creation resounds in every ear; the glorious lessons of immortal truth, that 
are written in the sky and on the earth, address themselves to every mind, 
and claim attention from every human being. God has made man upright, 
that he might look before and after; and he calls upon every one not merely 
to labor, but to reflect; not merely to practise the revelations of divine will, 
but to contemplate the displays of divine power. 



74 THE BASIS OF POLITICAL SOCIETY: A SPECTRUM OF VIEWS 

Yes, reforms in society are only effected through the masses of the people, 
and through them have continually taken place. New truths have been 
successively developed, and, becoming the common property of the human 
family, have improved its condition. This progress is advanced by every 
sect, precisely because each sect, to obtain vitality, does of necessity embody 
a truth; by every political party, for the conflicts of party are the war of 
ideas; by every nationality, for a nation cannot exist as such, till humanity 
makes it a special trustee of some part of its wealth for the ultimate benefit 
of all. The irresistible tendency of the human race is therefore to advance- 
ment, for absolute power has never succeeded, and can never succeed, in 
suppressing a single truth. An idea once revealed may find its admission 
into every living breast and live there. Like God it becomes immortal and 
omnipresent. The movement of the species is upward, irresistibly upward. 
The individual is often lost; Providence never disowns the race. No principle 
once promulgated, has ever been forgotten. No "timely tramp" of a despot's 
foot ever trod out one idea. The world cannot retrograde; the dark ages 
cannot return. Dynasties perish; cities are buried; nations have been victims 
to error, or martyrs for right; Humanity has always been on the advance; 
gaining maturity, universality, and power. 

Yes, truth is immortal; it cannot be destroyed; it is invincible, it cannot 
long be resisted. Not every great principle has yet been generated; but when 
once proclaimed and diffused, it lives without end, in the safe custody of 
the race. States may pass away; every just principle of legislation which has 
been once established will endure. Philosophy has sometimes forgotten God; 
a great people never did. The skepticism of the last century could not 
uproot Christianity, because it lived in the hearts of the millions. Do you 
think that infidelity is spreading? Christianity never lived in the hearts 
of so many millions as at this moment. The forms under which it is pro- 
fessed may decay, for they, like all that is the work of man's hands, are 
subject to the changes and chances of mortal being; but the spirit of truth 
is incorruptible; it may be developed, illustrated, and applied; it never can 
die; it never can decline. 

No truth can perish; no truth can pass away. The flame is undying, though 
generations disappear. Wherever moral truth has started into being, Human- 
ity claims and guards the bequest. Each generation gathers together the 
imperishable children of the past, and increases them by new sons of light, 
alike radiant with immortality. 



RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. 

ORTHODOXY 



It had been the hope of early New England leaders to 
establish in America a virtual theocratic state, governed 
by a Calvinist clergy. But hy the end of the seventeenth 
century there were evidences of rebellion against the 
Calvinist system. Its stern doctrines did not appear to 
square with the realities of American life: many Amer- 
icans found difficulty in convincing themselves that they 
and their neighbors were totally depraved; and such 
authoritarian dogmas as that of special election clashed 
sharply with nascent tendencies toward individualism 
and democracy. To some, theological absolutism seemed 
as abhorrent as the political absolutism against which 
they had been contending. The eighteenth century 
brought a series of revolts against Calvinism ranging 
from modification to outright repudiation. Liberalizing 
influences had been felt even before the Whitefield re- 
vivals of the 1740 s; it was Jonathan Edwards hatred and 
fear of Arminianism which impelled him to preach the 
terrifying sermons which began the Great Awakening. 
The Deism which claimed so many influential adherents 
at the time of the American Revolution was one mani- 
festation of an increasing rationalism in religion, as was 
the Unitarianism which succeeded it. 

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, ministers 
and laymen were being designated as either "liberal" 

75 



y6 RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

or "orthodox," although there was little open hostility 
and no sign of actual separation of the two groups. 
There were, indeed, many degrees of both orthodoxy and 
liberalism; each camp contained men with a variety of 
opinions. Even those who considered themselves good 
Calvinists were far from agreement on such doctrinal 
matters as total depravity, the vicarious atonement, and 
the degree of Christ's divinity. However, the chief divi- 
sion within the Calvinist ranks at this time seems to 
have been that between the evangelical, revivalistic "Hop- 
kinsians," and the more moderate "Old Calvinists." The 
liberals were united chiefly by their anti-Calvinism. They 
professed indifference to dogma, being in general op- 
posed to man-made creeds, and advocating mental free- 
dom in religion and the use of reason in interpreting 
the Bible. They were called by different names— the 
terms "Arian," "Arminian," and "Socinian," being used 
more or less indiscriminately by their enemies to desig- 
nate those who questioned the doctrine of the trinity 
or emphasized mans free will. 

Unitarianism, then, was merely one aspect of a gen- 
eral liberal reaction against what were regarded as the 
excesses of Calvinism. Its American roots are difficidt 
to trace, for the term was not generally used before 1800. 
It has been suggested that the New England parsons 
who preached revolution from 1750 to 1*775, as ^ e theo- 
logical liberals of their time, were in a sense pre-Uni- 
tarian. Boston ministers Jonathan Mayhew and Charles 
Chauncy had long before the Revolution questioned the 
doctrines of the trinity and original sin. But it was not 
until 1785 that the first American Unitarian Church 
was established ^although the name "Unitarian" was not 
actually used until eleven years later when the First 
Unitarian Church of Philadelphia was founded^). In this 
year James Freeman, Harvard graduate and liberal 
minister of Kings Chapel, Boston, struck from the Angli- 



RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY JJ 

can order of service all prayers to Christ and all references 
to the Trinity. 

During the first decade of the i8oo's Unitarian in- 
fluence increased, particularly in the Boston area, and 
Unitarianism began to emerge as a denomination distinct 
from Calvinistic Congregationalism. In 1805, after a di- 
visive controversy, Henry Ware, a liberal, was chosen 
over the orthodox candidate, Jesse Appleton, as Hollis 
Professor of Divinity at Harvard College. With the elec- 
tion of a liberal president and several other liberal profes- 
sors, Harvard soon became a Unitarian stronghold. The 
orthodox retaliated by establishing their own theological 
seminary at Andover—a move made possible largely 
through the efforts of Jedidiah Morse, who had opposed 
Ware's election, and who succeeded in establishing a 
working agreement between the Hopkinsians and the 
Old Calvinists. 

By 1810 the lines were beginning to be drawn. Some 
orthodox ministers discontinued the practice of exchang- 
ing pulpits with liberals. An increasingly bitter discussion 
developed between the orthodox journal, The Panoplist, 
founded by Morse in 1805, and the liberal Christian 
Disciple, published by Noah Worcester. When the crisis 
came, it turned loose on New England a flood of con- 
troversy which was to continue for fifteen years. 

The crisis was precipitated by a review article in The 
Panoplist in June, 18 15. Earlier in that year Jedidiah 
Morse had published as a pamphlet a chapter from a 
biography of Theophilus Lindsey written by the English 
Unitarian, Thomas Belsham. This pamphlet, entitled 
American Unitarianism, contained letters from American 
correspondents, some of them connected with King's 
Chapel, discussing liberal sentiments in this country. The 
review of the pamphlet in The Panoplist accused Amer- 
ican liberals of cowardice and dishonesty in concealing 
their Unitarian leanings. The Unitarians found it im- 



78 RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

possible to ignore this direct challenge, and their reply 
was made public in a letter written by William Ellery 
Channing and addressed to the Reverend Samuel C. 
Thacher. Channing acknowledged the failure of Uni- 
tarians to declare themselves openly, but attributed it not 
to cowardice, but to a desire to avoid controversy. He 
denied that the liberals were trying to divide the church 
and he closed his letter with a warning to Unitarians 
not to be betrayed by the review into any sort of sectarian 
revolt. Dr. Samuel Worcester of Salem published an 
answer to Channing, which evoked a pamphlet entitled 
"Are You a Christian or a Calvinist?" published anony- 
mously by John Lowell, a member of the Harvard 
Corporation, denouncing Morse and Worcester and de- 
fending Channing. 

Despite Channing's warning against sectarianism, the 
trend toward a separate denomination continued. By 18 19 
Channing himself was preaching militant Unitarianism. 
In May of that year he preached a sermon at the ordi- 
nation of Jared Sparks in the elegant First Unitarian 
Church of Baltimore. This eloquent statement of the 
Unitarian credo, which established the young Channing 
as undisputed leader of the liberal movement, proved 
to be one of the most influential pulpit utterances in 
American history. It is said to have had the widest 
circulation of any printed speech of its time until Web- 
ster's "Reply to Hayne." Elizabeth Peabody recalled that 
it was read extensively by laymen everywhere, especially 
by young men, and that "it made multitudes conscious 
that they were Unitarians." But if this manifesto rallied 
many to the liberal standard, it also drew bitter criticism 
from the orthodox. The controversy grew more heated, 
fanned by a series of public letters, articles, and sermons. 
As parish after parish was divided and the offended 
factions seceded to form new congregations, legal dif- 
ficulties arose over ownership of the church property. 



RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 79 

In the celebrated Dedham case of 1820 the Supreme 
Court of Massachusetts ruled that church property was 
vested in the voters of the parish rather than in the 
actual communicants or members of the church. Since 
in most cases the liberals constituted a majority in the 
parish (although they were frequently in the minority 
among the communicants) this decision favored the lib- 
eral cause. In a large number of parishes the meeting 
house and church property were turned over to the 
Unitarians, as the orthodox departed to set up new 
churches. One of the most important of these was the 
Hanover Street Church in Boston to which Dr. Lyman 
Beecher was called in 1826. 

Beecher had been a student at Yale when Chan- 
ning was at Harvard. There he had studied theology 
under the dedicated Calvinist Timothy Dwight, and had 
come to regard Unitarianism as a deadly foe. From the 
time it first began to show itself, he said, "it was a pre 
in my bones." His correspondence at the time of Chan- 
ning's Baltimore sermon reveals the depth of his feeling. 
He was profoundly troubled by the apathy of the 
orthodox and he burned to stamp out the heresies of the 
liberals. He waged unceasing warfare on infidelity— 
carrying on vigorous correspondence with his fellow- 
ministers, preaching and conducting revivals in various 
parts of New England, and driving himself beyond the 
limits of his strength. In September, 1823, he wrote his 
children that he was preparing an ordination sermon to 
preach at Worcester "which, I believe, as near as I can 
guess, will be a good one." In the spring of that year, 
while participating in a revival at the Park Street Church 
of Boston, Beecher had noted in his letters that Uni- 
tarians were in many cases people of weak beliefs, who 
knew only that they did not believe in Calvinism. But 
the Calvinism which repelled them, said Beecher, was 
a caricature. "When the truth, divested of obnoxious 



80 RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

terms, is mildly, and kindly, and luminously explained 
and earnestly applied, they have no shield, and are 
easily impressed and awakened. . . " x It was in this 
spirit that Beecher began the preparation of his Wor- 
cester sermon. 

]edidiah Morse, in the preface to the first issue of The 
Panoplist, had issued this call to arms: "It is the duty 
of the friends of evangelical truth and Christian morality 
. . . to 'contend earnestly for the faith once delivered 
to the saints! " In the Worcester sermon Lyman Beecher 
took the offensive in this battle by placing the two systems 
in contrast and pointing out that the liberal system was 
not the faith delivered to the saints. It was a long sermon, 
and he was able to deliver only half of it, but he set 
about immediately to prepare it for printing. Liberal re- 
action came early in 1824 when the Christian Examiner 
(successor to the Disciple) printed a thirty-page review, 
which began by expressing agreement with much 
Beecher had said and accusing him of not being a real 
Calvinist at all. To this Dr. Beecher replied that he had 
preached these doctrines for twenty years without opposi- 
tion from Calvinists, that since publication of the sermon 
he had not been denounced for heresy by the orthodox, 
that Unitarians had not offered to distribute editions of 
this "anti-Calvinist" sermon, and that the reviewer, having 
accused him of anti-Calvinism, had gone on to smite 
him "as if he were contending with a real antagonist!' 2 

Shortly after delivering his Worcester sermon, Dr. 
Beecher was called from his Litchfield, Connecticut, 
church to the pulpit of the new Hanover Street Congre- 
gational Church in Boston. For more than six years he 
continued to contend for the faith delivered to the saints, 
and through his preaching and writing to denounce 

1 Charles Beecher, ed., Autobiography and Correspondence of 
Lyman Beecher (New York: Harper & Bros., 1865, 2 vols.), 
I, p. 542. 

2 Ibid., pp. 560-563. 



RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

Unitarian infidelity. Surrounded by liberal congregations, 
the Hanover church was an island of orthodoxy from 
which Beecher carried on an almost continuous revival. 
But the great Unitarian Controversy which had split the 
Congregational Church in two was 'practically at an end. 
The founding of the American Unitarian Association in 
1825 made the separation complete; where once had 
been two factions within one church were now two 
churches. And in the Boston area at least, the Unitarians, 
who controlled the College, the Divinity School, and a 
large majority of the pulpits, held unquestioned com- 
mand of the field. 



Unitarian Christianity 
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 



Born, Newport, Rhode Island, April 7, 1780; died, Ben- 
nington, Vermont, October 2, 1842. Grandson of Wil- 
liam Ellery, one of the Sons of Liberty and signer of 
the Declaration of Independence. Graduated from Har- 
vard, 1798. Ordained and installed as minister, Federal 
Street Church, Boston, June 1, 1803; continued in this 
pastorate for 40 years until his death. A small, mild man 
of delicate health, known for his sweetness of spirit and 
hatred of factionalism, he was drawn against his will into 
one of the great religious controversies of his time. 
Through his speaking and writing, particularly during 
his later years, he exerted an important influence on the 
social issues of his day. The inscription on his statue in 
the Boston Public Gardens notes: "He breathed into 
theology a humane spirit." 



T 



Prove all things, hold fast that which is good. 

I Thess., 21 

'he peculiar circumstances of this occasion not only jus- 
tify, but seem to demand a departure from the course 
generally followed by preachers at the introduction of a brother into the sacred 
office. It is usual to speak of the nature, design, duties, and advantages of the 
Christian ministry; and on these topics I should now be happy to insist, did I not 
remember that a minister is to be given this day to a religious society, whose pe- 
culiarities of opinion have drawn upon them much remark, and may I not add, 

Baltimore, Maryland, May 5, 1819. The Works of William E. Channing, D.D. 
(Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1889), pp. 367-384. 

82 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 83 

much reproach. Many good minds, many sincere Christians, I am aware, are 
apprehensive that the solemnities of this day are to give a degree of influence 
to principles which they deem false and injurious. The fears and anxieties 
of such men I respect; and, believing that they are grounded in part on 
mistake, I have thought it my duty to lay before you, as clearly as I can, some 
of the distinguishing opinions of that class of Christians in our country, who 
are known to sympathize with this religious society. I must ask your patience, 
for such a subject is not to be despatched in a narrow compass. I must also 
ask you to remember, that it is impossible to exhibit, in a single discourse, 
our views of every doctrine of Revelation, much less the differences of 
opinion which are known to subsist among ourselves. I shall confine myself 
to topics on which our sentiments have been misrepresented, or which 
distinguish us most widely from others. May I not hope to be heard with 
candor? God deliver us all from prejudice and unkindness, and fill us with 
the love of truth and virtue. 

There are two natural divisions under which my thoughts will be ar- 
ranged. I shall endeavor to unfold, 1st, The principles which we adopt in 
interpreting the Scriptures. And 2dly, Some of the doctrines which the 
Scriptures, so interpreted, seem to us clearly to express. 

I. We regard the Scriptures as the records of God's successive revelations 
to mankind, and particularly of the last and most perfect revelation of his 
will by Jesus Christ. Whatever doctrines seem to us to be clearly taught in 
the Scriptures, we receive without reserve or exception. We do not, however, 
attach equal importance to all the books in this collection. Our religion, we 
believe, lies chiefly in the New Testament. The dispensation of Moses, 
compared with that of Jesus, we consider as adapted to the childhood of the 
human race, a preparation for a nobler system, and chiefly useful now as 
serving to confirm and illustrate the Christian Scriptures. Jesus Christ is 
the only master of Christians, and whatever he taught, either during his 
personal ministry, or by his inspired Apostles, we regard as of divine authority, 
and profess to make the rule of our lives. 

This authority, which we give to the Scriptures, is a reason, we conceive, 
for studying them with peculiar care, and for inquiring anxiously into the 
principles of interpretation, by which their true meaning may be ascertained. 
The principles adopted by the class of Christians in whose name I speak 
need to be explained, because they are often misunderstood. We are par- 
ticularly accused of making an unwarrantable use of reason in the interpreta- 
tion of Scripture. We are said to exalt reason above revelation, to prefer 
our own wisdom to God's. Loose and undefined charges of this kind are 
circulated so freely, that we think it due to ourselves, and to the cause of 
truth, to express our views with some particularity. 

Our leading principle in interpreting Scripture is this, that the Bible 



84 RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

is a book written for men, in the language of men, and that its meaning is 
to be sought in the same manner as that of other books. We believe that 
God, when he speaks to the human race, conforms, if we may so say, to 
the established rules of speaking and writing. How else would the Scriptures 
avail us more than if communicated in an unknown tongue? 

Now all books, and all conversation, require in the reader or hearer the 
constant exercise of reason; or their true import is only to be obtained by 
continual comparison and inference. Human language, you well know, 
admits various interpretations; and every word and every sentence must 
be modified and explained according to the subject which is discussed, 
according to the purposes, feelings, circumstances, and principles of the writer, 
and according to the genius and idioms of the language which he uses. These 
are acknowledged principles in the interpretation of human writings; and a 
man whose words we should explain without reference to these principles, 
would reproach us justly with a criminal want of candor, and an intention 
of obscuring or distorting his meaning. 

Were the Bible written in a language and style of its own, did it consist 
of words which admit but a single sense, and of sentences wholly detached 
from each other, there would be no place for the principles now laid down. 
We could not reason about it as about other writings. But such a book would 
be of little worth; and perhaps, of all books, the Scriptures correspond least 
to this description. The Word of God bears the stamp of the same hand 
which we see in his works. It has infinite connections and dependences. 
Every proposition is linked with others, and is to be compared with others, 
that its full and precise import may be understood. Nothing stands alone. 
The New Testament is built on the Old. The Christian dispensation is a 
continuation of the Jewish, the completion of a vast scheme of providence, 
requiring great extent of view in the reader. Still more, the Bible treats 
of subjects on which we receive ideas from other sources besides itself — 
such subjects as the nature, passions, relations, and duties of man; and it 
expects us to restrain and modify its language by the known truths which 
observation and experience furnish on these topics. 

We profess not to know a book which demands a more frequent exercise 
of reason than the Bible. In addition to the remarks now made on its 
infinite connections, we may observe that its style nowhere affects the 
precision of science, or the accuracy of definition. Its language is singularly 
glowing, bold, and figurative, demanding more frequent departures from 
the literal sense than that of our own age and country, and consequently 
demanding more continual exercise of judgment. We find, too, that the 
different portions of this book, instead of being confined to general truths, 
refer perpetually to the times when they were written, to states of society, 
to modes of thinking, to controversies in the church, to feelings and usages 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 85 

which have passed away, and without the knowledge of which we are 
constantly in danger of extending to all times, and places, what was of 
temporary and local application. We find, too, that some of these books 
are strongly marked by the genius and character of their respective writers, 
that the Holy Spirit did not so guide the Apostles as to suspend the peculiari- 
ties of their minds, and that a knowledge of their feelings, and of the 
influences under which they were placed, is one of the preparations for 
understanding their writings. With these views of the Bible, we feel it our 
bounden duty to exercise our reason upon it perpetually, to compare, to 
infer, to look beyond the letter to the spirit, to seek in the nature of the 
subject and the aim of the writer his true meaning; and, in general, to make 
use of what is known for explaining what is difficult, and for discovering 
new truths. 

Need I descend to particulars to prove that the Scriptures demand the 
exercise of reason? Take, for example, the style in which they generally 
speak of God, and observe how habitually they apply to him human passions 
and organs. Recollect the declarations of Christ, that he came not to send 
peace, but a sword; that unless we eat his flesh, and drink his blood, we 
have no life in us; that we must hate father and mother, and pluck out 
the right eye; and a vast number of passages equally bold and unlimited. 
Recollect the unqualified manner in which it is said of Christians, that 
they possess all things, know all things, and can do all things. Recollect 
the verbal contradiction between Paul and James, and the apparent clashing 
of some parts of Paul's writings with the general doctrines and end of 
Christianity. I might extend the enumeration indefinitely; and who does 
not see that we must limit all these passages by the known attributes 
of God, of Jesus Christ, and of human nature, and by the circumstances 
under which they were written, so as to give the language a quite different 
import from what it would require had it been applied to different beings, 
or used in different connections. 

Enough has been said to show in what sense we make use of reason 
in interpreting Scripture. From a variety of possible interpretations, we select 
that which accords with the nature of the subject and the state of the 
writer, with the connection of the passage, with the general strain of 
Scripture, with the known character and will of God, and with the obvious 
and acknowledged laws of nature. In other words, we believe that God 
never contradicts in one part of Scripture what he teaches in another; and 
never contradicts in revelation what he teaches in his works and providence. 
And we therefore distrust every interpretation which, after deliberate at- 
tention, seems repugnant to any established truth. We reason about the 
Bible precisely as civilians do about the constitution under which we live; 
who, you know, are. accustomed to limit one provision of that venerable 



86 RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

instrument by others, and to fix the precise import of its parts by inquiring 
into its general spirit, into the intentions of its authors, and into the prevalent 
feelings, impressions, and circumstances of the time when it was framed. 
Without these principles of interpretation, we frankly acknowledge that 
we cannot defend the divine authority of the Scriptures. Deny us this 
latitude, and we must abandon this book to its enemies. 



II. Having thus stated the principles according to which we interpret 
Scripture, I now proceed to the second great head of this discourse, which 
is, to state some of the views which we derive from that sacred book, par- 
ticularly those which distinguish us from other Christians. 

i. In the first place, we believe in the doctrine of God's unity, or that 
there is one God, and one only. To this truth we give infinite importance, and 
we feel ourselves bound to take heed, lest any man spoil us of it by vain 
philosophy. The proposition that there is one God seems to us exceedingly 
plain. We understand by it, that there is one being, one mind, one person, 
one intelligent agent, and one only, to whom underived and infinite per- 
fection and dominion belong. We conceive that these words could have 
conveyed no other meaning to the simple and uncultivated people, who 
were set apart to be the depositaries of this great truth, and who were 
utterly incapable of understanding those hair-breadth distinctions between 
being and person, which the sagacity of later ages has discovered. We find 
no intimation that this language was to be taken in an unusual sense, or 
that God's unity was a quite different thing from the oneness of other 
intelligent beings. 

We object to the doctrine of the Trinity, that, whilst acknowledging in 
words, it subverts in effect, the unity of God. According to this doctrine, 
there are three infinite and equal persons, possessing supreme divinity, 
called the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Each of these persons, as described 
by theologians, has his own particular consciousness, will, and perceptions. 
They love each other, converse with each other, and delight in each other's 
society. They perform different parts in man's redemption, each having 
his appropriate office, and neither doing the work of the other. The Son 
is mediator, and not the Father. The Father sends the Son, and is not 
himself sent; nor is he conscious, like the Son, of taking flesh. Here, then, 
we have three intelligent agents, possessed of different consciousnesses, dif- 
ferent wills, and different perceptions, performing different acts, and 
sustaining different relations; and if these things do not imply and constitute 
three minds or beings, we are utterly at a loss to know how three minds 
or beings are to be formed. It is difference of properties, and acts, and con- 
sciousness, which leads us to the belief of different intelligent beings, and 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 87 

if this mark fails us, our whole knowledge falls; we have no proof that all 
the agents and persons in the universe are not one and the same mind. 
When we attempt to conceive of three Gods, we can do nothing more than 
represent to ourselves three agents, distinguished from each other by similar 
marks and peculiarities to those which separate the persons of the Trinity; 
and when common Christians hear these persons spoken of as conversing 
with each other, loving each other, and performing different acts, how can 
they help regarding them as different beings, different minds? 

We do, then, with all earnestness, though without reproaching our 
brethren, protest against the irrational and unscriptural doctrine of the 
Trinity. "To us," as to the Apostle and the primitive Christians, "there is 
one God, even the Father." With Jesus, we worship the Father, as the only 
living and true God. We are astonished that any man can read the New 
Testament, and avoid the conviction that the Father alone is God. We hear 
our Saviour continually appropriating this character to the Father. We find 
the Father continually distinguished from Jesus by this title. "God sent his 
Son." "God anointed Jesus." Now, how singular and inexplicable is this 
phraseology, which fills the New Testament, if this title belong equally 
to Jesus, and if a principal object of this book is to reveal him as God, as 
partaking equally with the Father in supreme divinity! We challenge our 
opponents to adduce one passage in the New Testament, where the word 
God means three persons, where it is not limited to one person, and where, 
unless turned from its usual sense by the connection, it does not mean the 
Father. Can stronger proof be given that the doctrine of three persons in 
the Godhead is not a fundamental doctrine of Christianity? 

[Channing develops this idea further, and objects to the doctrine of the 
Trinity on the ground that it sets before the Christian not one, but three 
distinct objects of supreme adoration.] 



2. Having thus given our views of the unity of God, I proceed, in the 
second place, to observe that we believe in the unity of Jesus Christ. We 
believe that Jesus is one mind, one soul, one being, as truly one as we are, 
and equally distinct from the one God. We complain of the doctrine of 
the Trinity, that, not satisfied with making God three beings, it makes 
Jesus Christ two beings, and thus introduces infinite confusion into our 
conceptions of his character. This corruption of Christianity, alike repug- 
nant to common sense and to the general strain of Scripture, is a remarkable 
proof of the power of a false philosophy in disfiguring the simple truth of 
Jesus. 

According to this doctrine, Jesus Christ, instead of being one mind, 



88 RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

one conscious intelligent principle, whom we can understand, consists of 
two souls, two minds; the one divine, the other human; the one weak, the 
other almighty; the one ignorant, the other omniscient. Now we maintain 
that this is to make Christ two beings. To denominate him one person, 
one being, and yet to suppose him made up of two minds, infinitely different 
from each other, is to abuse and confound language, and to throw darkness 
over all our conceptions of intelligent natures. According to the common 
doctrine, each of these two minds in Christ has its own consciousness, its 
own will, its own perceptions. They have, in fact, no common properties. The 
divine mind feels none of the wants and sorrows of the human, and the 
human is infinitely removed from the perfection and happiness of the 
divine. Can you conceive of two beings in the universe more distinct? We 
have always thought that one person was constituted and distinguished by 
one consciousness. The doctrine that one and the same person should have 
two consciousnesses, two wills, two souls, infinitely different from each 
other, this we think an enormous tax on human credulity. 

We say that if a doctrine so strange, so difficult, so remote from all 
the previous conceptions of men, be indeed a part, and an essential part, 
of revelation, it must be taught with great distinctness, and we ask our 
brethren to point to some plain, direct passage, where Christ is said to be 
composed of two minds infinitely different, yet constituting one person. 
We find none. Other Christians, indeed, tell us that this doctrine is neces- 
sary to the harmony of the Scriptures, that some texts ascribe to Jesus 
Christ human, and others divine properties, and that to reconcile these, 
we must suppose two minds, to which these properties may be referred. In 
other words, for the purpose of reconciling certain difficult passages, which 
a just criticism can in a great degree, if not wholly, explain, we must 
invent an hypothesis vastly more difficult, and involving gross absurdity. 
We are to find our way out of a labyrinth by a clue which conducts us into 
mazes infinitely more inextricable. 

Surely, if Jesus Christ felt that he consisted of two minds, and that this 
was a leading feature of his religion, his phraseology respecting himself 
would have been colored by this peculiarity. The universal language of men 
is framed upon the idea that one person is one person, is one mind, and one 
soul; and when the multitude heard this language from the lips of Jesus, 
they must have taken it in its usual sense, and must have referred to a single 
soul all which he spoke, unless expressly instructed to interpret it differently. 
But where do we find this instruction? Where do you meet, in the New 
Testament, the phraseology which abounds in Trinitarian books, and which 
necessarily grows from the doctrine of two natures in Jesus? Where does 
this divine teacher say, "This I speak as God, and this as man; this is true 
only of my human mind, this only of my divine"? Where do we find in the 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 89 

Epistles a trace of this strange phraseology? Nowhere. It was not needed 
in that day. It was demanded by the errors of a later age. 

We believe, then, that Christ is one mind, one being, and, I add, a being 
distinct from the one God. That Christ is not the one God, not the same 
being with the Father, is a necessary inference from our former head, 
in which we saw that the doctrine of three persons in God is a fiction. 
But on so important a subject, I would add a few remarks. We wish that 
those from whom we differ would weigh one striking fact. Jesus, in his 
preaching, continually spoke of God. The word was always in his mouth. 
We ask, does he by this word, ever mean himself r 5 We say, never. On the 
contrary, he most plainly distinguishes between God and himself, and so 
do his disciples. How this is to be reconciled with the idea that the mani- 
festation of Christ, as God, was a primary object of Christianity, our ad- 
versaries must determine. 



We are also told that Christ is a more interesting object, that his love and 
mercy are more felt, when he is viewed as the Supreme God, who left his 
glory to take humanity and to suffer for men. That Trinitarians are strongly 
moved by this representation, we do not mean to deny; but we think their 
emotions altogether founded on a misapprehension of their own doctrines. 
They talk of the second person of the Trinity's leaving his glory and his 
Father's bosom, to visit and save the world. But this second person, being 
the unchangeable and infinite God, was evidently incapable of parting with 
the least degree of his perfection and felicity. At the moment of his taking 
flesh, he was as intimately present with his Father as before, and equally 
with his Father filled heaven, and earth, and immensity. This Trinitarians 
acknowledge; and still they profess to be touched and overwhelmed by the 
amazing humiliation of this immutable being! But not only does their 
doctrine, when fully explained, reduce Christ's humiliation to a fiction, it 
almost wholly destroys the impressions with which his cross ought to be 
viewed. According to their doctrine, Christ was comparatively no sufferer at 
all. It is true, his human mind suffered; but this, they tell us, was an in- 
finitely small part of Jesus, bearing no more proportion to his whole nature, 
than a single hair of our heads to the whole body, or than a drop to the 
ocean. The divine mind of Christ, that which was most properly himself, 
was infinitely happy at the very moment of the suffering of his humanity. 
Whilst hanging on the cross, he was the happiest being in the universe, 
as happy as the infinite Father; so that his pains, compared with his felicity, 
were nothing. This Trinitarians do, and must, acknowledge. It follows 
necessarily from the immutableness of the divine nature which they ascribe 
to Christ; so that their system, justly viewed, robs his death of interest, 



90 RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

weakens our sympathy with his sufferings, and is, of all others, most un- 
favorable to a love of Christ, founded on a sense of his sacrifices for 
mankind. We esteem our own views to be vastly more affecting. It is our 
belief that Christ's humiliation was real and entire, that the whole Saviour, 
and not a part of him, suffered, that his crucifixion was a scene of deep 
and unmixed agony. As we stand round his cross, our minds are not dis- 
tracted, nor our sensibility weakened, by contemplating him as composed 
of incongruous and infinitely differing minds, and as having a balance of 
infinite felicity. We recognize in the dying Jesus but one mind. This, we 
think, renders his sufferings, and his patience and love in bearing them, 
incomparably more impressive and affecting than the system we oppose. 

3. Having thus given our belief on two great points, namely, that there 
is one God, and that Jesus Christ is a being distinct from and inferior to 
God, I now proceed to another point, on which we lay still greater stress. 
We believe in the moral perfection of God. We consider no part of 
theology so important as that which treats of God's moral character; and we 
value our views of Christianity chiefly as they assert his amiable and 
venerable attributes. 

It may be said that in regard to this subject all Christians agree, that all 
ascribe to the Supreme Being infinite justice, goodness, and holiness. We 
reply, that it is very possible to speak of God magnificently, and to think 
of him meanly; to apply to his person high-sounding epithets, and to his 
government, principles which make him odious. The Heathens called 
Jupiter the greatest and the best; but his history was black with cruelty and 
lust. We cannot judge of men's real ideas of God by their general language, 
for in all ages they have hoped to soothe the Deity by adulation. We must 
inquire into their particular views of his purposes, of the principles of his 
administration, and of his disposition towards his creatures. 

We conceive that Christians have generally leaned towards a very in- 
jurious view of the Supreme Being. They have too often felt as if he 
were raised, by his greatness and sovereignty, above the principles of morality, 
above those eternal laws of equity and rectitude to which all other beings are 
subjected. We believe that in no being is the sense of right so strong, 
so omnipotent, as in God. We believe that his almighty power is entirely 
submitted to his perceptions of rectitude; and this is the ground of our 
piety. It is not because he is our Creator merely, but because he created 
us for good and holy purposes; it is not because his will is irresistible, but 
because his will is the perfection of virtue, that we pay him allegiance. 
We cannot bow before a being, however great and powerful, who governs 
tyrannically. We respect nothing but excellence, whether on earth or in 
heaven. We venerate not the loftiness of God's throne, but the equity and 
goodness in which it is established. 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 9 1 

We believe that God is infinitely good, kind, benevolent, in the proper 
sense of these words; good in disposition as well as in act; good not to a few, 
but to all; good to every individual, as well as to the general system. 

We believe, too, that God is just; but we never forget that his justice is 
the justice of a good being, dwelling in the same mind and acting in 
harmony, with perfect benevolence. By this attribute, we understand God's 
infinite regard to virtue or moral worth, expressed in a moral government; 
that is, in giving excellent and equitable laws, and in conferring such 
rewards, and inflicting such punishments, as are best fitted to secure their 
observance. God's justice has for its end the highest virtue of the creation, 
and it punishes for this end alone; and thus it coincides with benevo- 
lence; for virtue and happiness, though not the same, are inseparably con- 
joined. 

God's justice thus viewed appears to us to be in perfect harmony with his 
mercy. According to the prevalent systems of theology, these attributes are 
so discordant and jarring, that to reconcile them is the hardest task and 
the most wonderful achievement of infinite wisdom. To us they seem to be 
intimate friends, always at peace, breathing the same spirit, and seeking 
the same end. By God's mercy, we understand not a blind instinctive com- 
passion, which forgives without reflection, and without regard to the interests 
of virtue. This, we acknowledge, would be incompatible with justice, and 
also with enlightened benevolence. God's mercy, as we understand it, 
desires strongly the happiness of the guilty; but only through their penitence. 
It has a regard to character as truly as his justice. It defers punishment, and 
suffers long, that the sinner may return to his duty, but leaves the impenitent 
and unyielding to the fearful retribution threatened in God's Word. 

To give our views of God in one word, we believe in his Parental 
character. We ascribe to him, not only the name, but the dispositions and 
principles of a father. We believe that he has a father's concern for his 
creatures, a father's desire for their improvement, a father's equity in 
proportioning his commands to their powers, a father's joy in their progress, 
a father's readiness to receive the penitent, and a father's justice for the 
incorrigible. We look upon this world as a place of education, in which 
he is training men by prosperity and adversity, by aids and obstructions, 
by conflicts of reason and passion, by motives to duty and temptations to 
sin, by various disciplines suited to free and moral beings, for union with 
himself, and for a sublime and ever-growing virtue in heaven. 

Now, we object to the systems of religion which prevail among us, that 
they are adverse, in a greater or less degree, to these purifying, comforting, 
and honorable views of God; that they take from us our Father in heaven, 
and substitute for him a being whom we cannot love if we would, and 
whom we ought not to love if we could. We object, particularly on this 



92 RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

ground, to that system which arrogates to itself the name of Orthodoxy, 
and which is now industriously propagated through our country. This system 
indeed takes various shapes, but in all it casts dishonor on the Creator. 
According to its old and genuine form, it teaches that God brings us into 
life wholly depraved, so that under the innocent features of our childhood 
is hidden a nature averse to all good and propense to all evil, a nature which 
exposes us to God's displeasure and wrath, even before we have acquired 
power to understand our duties or to reflect upon our actions. According 
to a more modern exposition, it teaches that we came from the hands of 
our Maker with such a constitution, and are placed under such influences 
and circumstances, as to render certain and infallible the total depravity 
of every human being from the first moment of his moral agency; and it 
also teaches that the offence of the child, who brings into life this ceaseless 
tendency to unmingled crime, exposes him to the sentence of everlasting 
damnation. Now, according to the plainest principles of morality, we main- 
tain that a natural constitution of the mind, unfailingly disposing it to evil 
and to evil alone, would absolve it from guilt; that to give existence under 
this condition would argue unspeakable cruelty; and that to punish the 
sin of this unhappily constituted child with endless ruin would be a wrong 
unparalleled by the most merciless despotism. 

This system also teaches that God selects from this corrupt mass a number 
to be saved, and plucks them, by a special influence, from the common 
ruin; that the rest of mankind, though left without that special grace which 
their conversion requires, are commanded to repent, under penalty of ag- 
gravated woe; and that forgiveness is promised them on terms which their 
very constitution infallibly disposes them to reject, and in rejecting which 
they awfully enhance the punishments of hell. These proffers of forgiveness 
and exhortations of amendment, to beings born under a blighting curse, 
fill our minds with a horror which we want words to express. 

That this religious system does not produce all the effects on character 
which might be anticipated, we most joyfully admit. It is often, very often, 
counteracted by nature, conscience, common sense, by the general strain 
of Scripture, by the mild example and precepts of Christ, and by the many 
positive declarations of God's universal kindness and perfect equity. But 
still we think that we see its unhappy influence. It tends to discourage the 
timid, to give excuses to the bad, to feed the vanity of the fanatical, and to 
offer shelter to the bad feelings of the malignant. By shocking, as it does, 
the fundamental principles of morality, and by exhibiting a severe and 
partial Deity, it tends strongly to pervert the moral faculty, to form a gloomy, 
forbidding, and servile religion, and to lead men to substitute censoriousness, 
bitterness, and persecution, for a tender and impartial charity. We think, 
too, that this system, which begins with degrading human nature, may be 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 93 

expected to end in pride; for pride grows out of a consciousness of high 
distinctions, however obtained, and no distinction is so great as that which 
is made between the elected and abandoned of God. 

The false and dishonorable views of God which have now been stated, 
we feel ourselves bound to resist unceasingly. Other errors we can pass over 
with comparative indifference. But we ask our opponents to leave to us 
a god, worthy of our love and trust, in whom our moral sentiments may 
delight, in whom our weaknesses and sorrows may find refuge. We cling 
to the Divine perfections. We meet them everywhere in creation, we read 
them in the Scriptures, we see a lovely image of them in Jesus Christ; and 
gratitude, love, and veneration call on us to assert them. Reproached, as 
we often are, by men, it is our consolation and happiness, that one of our 
chief offences is the zeal with which we vindicate the dishonored goodness 
and rectitude of God. 

4. Having thus spoken of the unity of God; of the unity of Jesus, and 
his inferiority to God; and of the perfections of the Divine character; I now 
proceed to give our views of the mediation of Christ, and of the purposes 
of his mission. With regard to the great object which Jesus came to ac- 
complish, there seems to be no possibility of mistake. We believe that he 
was sent by the Father to effect a moral or spiritual deliverance of mankind; 
that is, to rescue men from sin and its consequences, and to bring them 
to a state of everlasting purity and happiness. We believe, too, that he 
accomplishes this sublime purpose by a variety of methods; by his instructions 
respecting God's unity, parental character, and moral government, which 
are admirably fitted to reclaim the world from idolatry and impiety, to the 
knowledge, love, and obedience of the Creator; by his promises of pardon 
to the penitent, and of divine assistance to those who labor for progress in 
moral excellence; by the light which he has thrown on the path of duty; 
by his own spotless example, in which the loveliness and sublimity of virtue 
shine forth to warm and quicken as well as guide us to perfection; by his 
threatenings against incorrigible guilt; by his glorious discoveries of im- 
mortality; by his sufferings and death; by that signal event, the resurrection, 
which powerfully bore witness to his divine mission, and brought down to 
men's senses a future life; by his continual intercession, which obtains for 
us spiritual aid and blessings; and by the power with which he is invested 
of raising the dead, judging the world, and conferring the everlasting 
rewards promised to the faithful. 

We have no desire to conceal the fact that a difference of opinion exists 
among us in regard to an interesting part of Christ's mediation; I mean, 
in regard to the precise influence of his death on our forgiveness. Many 
suppose that this event contributes to our pardon, as it was a principal 
means of confirming his religion, and of giving it a power over the mind; 



94 RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

in other words, that it procures forgiveness by leading to that repentance 
and virtue which is the great and only condition on which forgiveness is 
bestowed. Many of us are dissatisfied with this explanation, and think that 
the Scriptures ascribe the remission of sins to Christ's death with an em- 
phasis so peculiar that we ought to consider this event as having a special 
influence in removing punishment, though the Scriptures may not reveal 
the way in which it contributes to this end. 

Whilst, however, we differ in explaining the connection between Christ's 
death and human forgiveness,— a connection which we all gratefully acknowl- 
edge,— we agree in rejecting many sentiments which prevail in regard to 
his mediation. The idea which is conveyed to common minds by the popular 
system, that Christ's death has an influence in making God placable, or 
merciful, in awakening his kindness towards men, we reject with strong 
disapprobation. We are happy to find that this very dishonorable notion 
is disowned by intelligent Christians of that class from which we differ. 
We recollect, however, that not long ago, it was common to hear of Christ 
as having died to appease God's wrath, and to pay the debt of sinners to 
his inflexible justice; and we have a strong persuasion that the language of 
popular religious books, and the common mode of stating the doctrine of 
Christ's mediation, still communicate very degrading views of God's char- 
acter. They give to multitudes the impression that the death of Jesus produces 
a change in the mind of God towards man, and that in this its efficacy chiefly 
consists. No error seems to us more pernicious. We can endure no shade 
over the pure goodness of God. We earnestly maintain that Jesus, instead 
of calling forth in any way or degree, the mercy of the Father, was sent 
by that mercy, to be our Saviour; that he is nothing to the human race 
but what he is by God's appointment; that he communicates nothing but 
what God empowers him to bestow; that our Father in heaven is originally, 
essentially, and eternally placable, and disposed to forgive; and that his 
unborrowed, underived, and unchangeable love is the only fountain of 
what flows to us through his Son. We conceive that Jesus is dishonored, 
not glorified, by ascribing to him an influence which clouds the splendor 
of Divine benevolence. 



5. Having thus stated our views of the highest object of Christ's mission, 
that it is the recovery of men to virtue, or holiness, J shall now, in the last 
place, give our views of the nature of Christian virtue, or true holiness. We 
believe that all virtue has its foundation in the moral nature of man, 
that is, in conscience, or his sense of duty, and in the power of forming 
his temper and life according to conscience. We believe that these moral 
faculties are the grounds of responsibility, and the highest distinctions of 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 95 

human nature, and that no act is praiseworthy any farther than it springs 
from their exertion. We believe that no dispositions infused into us without 
our own moral activity are of the nature of virtue, and therefore we reject 
the doctrine of irresistible divine influence on the human mind, moulding 
it into goodness as marble is hewn into a statue. Such goodness, if this word 
may be used, would not be the object of moral approbation, any more 
than the instinctive affections of inferior animals, or the constitutional 
amiableness of human beings. 

By these remarks, we do not mean to deny the importance of God's 
aid or Spirit; but by his Spirit, we mean a moral, illuminating, and persuasive 
influence, not physical, not compulsory, not involving a necessity of virtue. 
We object, strongly, to the idea of many Christians respecting man's im- 
potence and God's irresistible agency on the heart, believing that they subvert 
our responsibility and the laws of our moral nature, that they make men 
machines, that they cast on God the blame of all evil deeds, that they 
discourage good minds, and inflate the fanatical with wild conceits of 
immediate and sensible inspiration. 

Among the virtues, we give the first place to the love of God. We believe 
that this principle is the true end and happiness of our being, that we were 
made for union with our Creator, that his infinite perfection is the only 
sufficient object and true resting-place for the insatiable desires and un- 
limited capacities of the human mind, and that, without him, our noblest 
sentiments, admiration, veneration, hope, and love, would wither and decay. 
We believe, too, that the love of God is not only essential to happiness, but 
to the strength and perfection of all the virtues; that conscience, without the 
sanction of God's authority and retributive justice, would be a weak director; 
that benevolence, unless nourished by communion with his goodness, and 
encouraged by his smile, could not thrive amidst the selfishness and thank- 
lessness of the world; and that self-government, without a sense of the 
divine inspection, would hardly extend beyond an outward and partial 
purity. God, as he is essentially goodness, holiness, justice, and virtue, so 
he is the life, motive, and sustainer of virtue in the human soul. 

But, whilst we earnesdy inculcate the love of God, we believe that great 
care is necessary to distinguish it from counterfeits. We think that much 
which is called piety is worthless. Many have fallen into the error that 
there can be no excess in feelings which have God for their object; and, 
distrusting as coldness that self-possession without which virtue and devo- 
tion lose all their dignity, they have abandoned themselves to extravagances 
which have brought contempt on piety. Most certainly, if the love of God 
be that which often bears its name, the less we have of it the better. If 
religion be the shipwreck of understanding, we cannot keep too far from 
it. On this subject, we always speak plainly. We cannot sacrifice our reason 



96 RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

to the reputation of zeal. We owe it to truth and religion to maintain that 
fanaticism, partial insanity, sudden impressions, and ungovernable trans- 
ports, are any thing rather than piety. 

We conceive that the true love of God is a moral sentiment, founded 
on a clear perception, and consisting in a high esteem and veneration of 
his moral perfections. Thus, it perfectly coincides, and is in fact the same 
thing, with the love of virtue, rectitude, and goodness. You will easily 
judge, then, what we esteem the surest and only decisive signs of piety. We 
lay no stress on strong excitements. We esteem him, and him only, a pious 
man, who practically conforms to God's moral perfections and government; 
who shows his delight in God's benevolence by loving and serving his 
neighbour; his delight in God's justice by being resolutely upright; his 
sense of God's purity by regulating his thoughts, imagination, and desires; 
and whose conversation, business, and domestic life are swayed by a regard 
to God's presence and authority. In all things else men may deceive them- 
selves. Disordered nerves may give them strange sights, and sounds, and 
impressions. Texts of Scripture may come to them as from Heaven. Their 
whole souls may be moved, and their confidence in God's favor be un- 
doubting. But in all this there is no religion. The question is, Do they love 
God's commands, in which his character is fully expressed, and give up 
to these their habits and passions? Without this, ecstacy is a mockery. 
One surrender of desire to God's will is worth a thousand transports. We do 
not judge of the bent of men's minds by their raptures, any more than we 
judge of the natural direction of a tree during a storm. We rather suspect 
loud profession, for we have observed that deep feeling is generally noiseless, 
and least seeks display. 

We would not, by these remarks, be understood as wishing to exclude 
from religion warmth, and even transport. We honor, and highly value, 
true religious sensibility. We believe that Christianity is intended to act 
powerfully on our whole nature, on the heart as well as the understanding 
and the conscience. We conceive of heaven as a state where the love of God 
will be exalted into an unbounded fervor and joy; and we desire, in our 
pilgrimage here, to drink into the spirit of that better world. But we think 
that religious warmth is only to be valued when it springs naturally from 
an improved character, when it comes unforced, when it is the recompense 
of obedience, when it is the warmth of a mind which understands God 
by being like him, and when, instead of disordering, it exalts the understanding, 
invigorates conscience, gives a pleasure to common duties, and is seen 
to exist in connection with cheerfulness, judiciousness, and a reasonable 
frame of mind. When we observe a fervor called religious in men whose 
general character expresses little refinement and elevation, and whose piety 
seems at war with reason, we pay it little respect. We honor religion too 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 97 

much to give its sacred name to a feverish, forced, fluctuating zeal, which 
has little power over the life. 

Another important branch of virtue we believe to be love to Christ. The 
greatness of the work of Jesus, the spirit with which he executed it, and 
the sufferings which he bore for our salvation, we feel to be strong claims 
on our gratitude and veneration. We see in nature no beauty to be com- 
pared with the loveliness of his character, nor do we find on earth a benefactor 
to whom we owe an equal debt. We read his history with delight, and learn 
from it the perfection of our nature. We are particularly touched by his 
death, which was endured for our redemption, and by that strength of 
charity which triumphed over his pains. His resurrection is the foundation 
of our hope of immortality. His intercession gives us boldness to draw nigh 
to the throne of grace, and we look up to heaven with new desire when 
we think that, if we follow him here, we shall there see his benignant 
countenance, and enjoy his friendship for ever. 

I need not express to you our views on the subject of the benevolent 
virtues. We attach such importance to these, that we are sometimes re- 
proached with exalting them above piety. We regard the spirit of love, charity, 
meekness, forgiveness, liberality, and beneficence, as the badge and dis- 
tinction of Christians, as the brightest image we can bear of God, as the 
best proof of piety. On this subject I need not and cannot enlarge; but there 
is one branch of benevolence which I ought not to pass over in silence, 
because we think that we conceive of it more highly and justly than many 
of our brethren. I refer to the duty of candor, charitable judgment, especially 
towards those who differ in religious opinion. We think that in nothing 
have Christians so widely departed from their religion, as in this particular. 
We read with astonishment and horror the history of the church; and 
sometimes, when we look back on the fires of persecution, and on the zeal 
of Christians in building up walls of separation, and in giving up one another 
to perdition, we feel as if we were reading the records of an infernal, rather 
than a heavenly kingdom. An enemy to every religion, if asked to describe 
a Christian, would, with some show of reason, depict him as an idolator of 
his own distinguishing opinions, covered with badges of party, shutting 
his eyes on the virtues, and his ears on the arguments, of his opponents, 
arrogating all excellence to his own sect and all saving power to his own 
creed, sheltering under the name of pious zeal the love of domination, the 
conceit of infallibility, and the spirit of intolerance, and trampling on men's 
rights under the pretence of saving their souls. 



To all who hear me, I would say, with the Apostle, Prove all things, 
hold fast that which is good. Do not, brethren, shrink from the duty of 



98 RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

searching God's Word for yourselves, through fear of human censure and 
denunciation. Do not think that you may innocently follow the opinions 
which prevail around you, without investigation, on the ground that 
Christianity is now so purified from errors, as to need no laborious research. 
There is much reason to believe that Christianity is at this moment dis- 
honored by gross and cherished corruptions. If you remember the darkness 
which hung over the Gospel for ages; if you consider the impure union 
which still subsists in almost every Christian country between the church 
and state, and which enlists men's selfishness and ambition on the side of 
established error; if you recollect in what degree the spirit of intolerance 
has checked free inquiry, not only before, but since the Reformation; you 
will see that Christianity cannot have freed itself from all the human inven- 
tions which disfigured it under the Papal tyranny. No. Much stubble is 
yet to be burned; much rubbish to be removed; many gaudy decorations 
which a false taste has hung around Christianity must be swept away; and 
the earth-born fogs which have long shrouded it must be scattered, before 
this divine fabric will rise before us in its native and awful majesty, in 
its harmonious proportions, in its mild and celestial splendors. This glorious 
reformation in the church, we hope, under God's blessing, from the progress 
of the human intellect, from the moral progress of society, from the con- 
sequent decline of prejudice and bigotry, and, though last not least, from 
the subversion of human authority in matters of religion, from the fall of 
those hierarchies, and other human institutions, by which the minds of 
individuals are oppressed under the weight of numbers, and a Papal dominion 
is perpetuated in the Protestant church. Our earnest prayer to God is that 
he will overturn, and overturn, and overturn the strong-holds of spiritual 
usurpation, until he shall come whose right it is to rule the minds of men; 
that the conspiracy of ages against the liberty of Christians may be brought 
to an end; that the servile assent so long yielded to human creeds may give 
place to honest and devout inquiry into the Scriptures; and that Christianity, 
thus purified from error, may put forth its almighty energy, and prove 
itself, by its ennobling influence on the mind, to be indeed "the power of 
God unto salvation." 



The Faith Once Delivered to the Saints 

LYMAN BEECHER 



Born, New Haven, Connecticut, October 12, 1775; died, 
Brooklyn, New York, January 10, 1863. Graduated from 
Yale, 1797. Ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1799. 
Pastor East Hampton, Long Island, 1799-18 10; Litch- 
field, Connecticut, 1810-1826; Hanover Street, Boston, 
1 826-1 832. Left Boston in 1832 to become first presi- 
dent and professor of theology at Lane Theological 
Seminary and pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church 
of Cincinnati. Became involved in a theological con- 
troversy; was accused of heresy; tried and acquitted. 
Resigned from Lane in 1850. A Calvinist, but a believer 
in free will, Beecher devoted his pastorates to a con- 
tinuous religious revival. Called by Theodore Parker 
"the father of more brains than any other man in Amer- 
ica," Beecher had thirteen children, the most famous 
being Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. 



Beloved, when 1 gave all diligence to write unto you of 
the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto 
you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend 
for the faith which was once delivered to the saints. 

Jude, 3 



)y the faith once delivered to the saints is to be under- 
stood the doctrines of the Gospel. These were deliv- 
ered to the saints by holy men, who spake as they were moved by the Holy 



B 



A Sermon Delivered at Worcester, Mass., Oct. 15, 1823, at the Ordination of the 
Rev. Loammi Ives Hoadly, Lyman Beecher, D.D., 2nd ed. (Boston: Crocker and 
Brewster, 1824), 40 pp. Basic doctrinal points are presented in approximately the first 
half of the sermon reproduced here. 

99 



IOO RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

Ghost. The saints to whom they were delivered were those who constituted 
the church under the Old dispensation, and the New. 

The exhortation to contend for them earnestly supposes that they would 
be powerfully assailed; and yet that they might be known and defended. 

It is proposed, in this discourse, to give an epitome of what is supposed 
to be the faith delivered to the saints;— to state the reasons for believing it 
such;— and to point out the manner in which it becomes the churches of 
our Lord to contend for it. 

The faith once delivered to the saints included, it is believed, among 
other doctrines, the following: — 

That men are free agents; in the possession of such faculties, and placed 
in such circumstances, as render it practicable for them to do whatever God 
requires; reasonable that he should require it; and fit that he should inflict, 
literally, the entire penalty of disobedience,— such ability is here intended, 
as lays a perfect foundation for government by law, and for rewards and 
punishments according to deeds. 

That the divine law requires love to God with all the heart, and im- 
partial love for men; together with certain overt duties to God and men, 
by which this love is to be expressed; and that this law is supported by 
the sanctions of eternal life and eternal death. 

That the ancestors of our race violated this law; that, in some way, as 
a consequence of their apostasy, all men, as soon as they become capable 
of accountable action, do, of their own accord, most freely, and most wickedly, 
withhold from God the supreme love, and from man the impartial love, 
which the law requires, beside violating many of its practical precepts: and 
that the obedience of the heart, which the law requires, has ceased entirely 
from the whole race of man. 

That, according to the principles of moral government, obedience, either 
antecedent or subsequent to transgression, cannot avert the penalty of law; 
and that pardon, upon condition of repentance merely, would destroy the 
efficacy of moral government. 

That an atonement has been made for sin by Jesus Christ; with reference 
to which God can maintain the influence of his law and forgive sin, upon 
condition of repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ:— 
that all men are invited sincerely, in this way to return to God, with an 
assurance of pardon and eternal life if they comply. 

That a compliance with these conditions is practicable, in the regular 
exercise of the powers and faculties given to man as an accountable creature; 
and is prevented only by the exercise of a voluntary, criminal aversion to 
God, so inflexibly obstinate that, by motives merely, men are never per- 
suaded to repent and believe. 

That God is able, by his Spirit, to make to the mind of man such an appli- 



LYMAN BEECHER 10 1 

cation of the truth, as shall unfailingly convince him of sin, render him 
willing to obey the gospel, and actually and joyfully obedient. 

That this special influence of the Holy Spirit is given according to the 
supreme discretion or good pleasure of God; and yet, ordinarily, is so in- 
separably associated with the use of means by the sinner, as to create ample 
encouragement to attend upon them, and to render all hopes of conversion, 
while neglecting or rejecting the truth, or while living in open sin, eminently 
presumptuous. 

That believers are justified by the merits of Christ through faith; and are 
received into a covenant with God, which secures their continuance in 
holiness forever;— while those who die in their sins will continue to sin 
wilfully, and to be punished justly, for ever. 

That God exercises a providential government; which extends to all events 
in such a manner, as to lay a just foundation for resignation to his will 
in afflictions brought upon us by the wickedness of men, and for gratitude 
in the reception of good in all the various modes of human instrumentality;— 
that all events shall illustrate his glory, and be made subservient to the good 
of his kingdom;— and that this government is administered in accordance 
with a purpose or plan known and approved of by him from the beginning. 

Finally, that the God of the universe has revealed himself to us as existing 
in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; possessing dis- 
tinct and equal attributes, and, in some unrevealed manner, so united 
as to constitute one God. 

These are the doctrines, which, it is believed, were delivered to the saints, 
and which have been held, substantially, though with some variety of 
modification, by the true church of God in all ages. To prevent circumlocu- 
tion, I shall, in this discourse, call them the Evangelical System, and for the 
same reason I shall call the opposite doctrines the Liberal System. 

It has been common to support these doctrines by the quotation of proof 
texts. But to these a different exposition is given, more reasonable, it is 
said, and carrying with it a higher probability of truth; which leads to critical 
exposition, and opens a wide field for evasion, and creates perplexity and 
indecision. 

My design at present is to avail myself of collateral evidence only; with 
the view of attempting to decide, in this way, which is the correct exposi- 
tion of the proof texts, the evangelical, or the liberal exposition. 

For the sake of argument, I shall suppose the evidence from exposition 
to be, on each side, exactly balanced; and proceed to lay into the scale of 
evangelical exposition those arguments which seem to furnish evidence of 
its correctness. I observe, then, 

i. That the doctrines of the evangelical system are in accordance with 
the most direct and obvious meaning of the sacred text. By obvious meaning, 



102 RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

I intend that which is actually suggested, without note or comment, to 
the minds of honest and unlettered men. That the proof texts teach the 
doctrines of the evangelical system in this manner is alleged by learned 
infidels as a reason for rejecting the inspiration of the Bible; by Unitarian 
commentators and writers, as a reason for restraining, modifying, and turning 
aside, the text; and by critics, who translate or expound without reference 
to theological opinions; and by the better part of the Unitarian German 
critics, after having denied the inspiration of the Bible. No translators have 
been able to maintain a reputation for classical literature, and to sink, in 
a translation, the obvious meaning below, and bring up the philosophical 
meaning upon, the surface. The editors of the "Improved Version" have 
manifested as much good will, with as little conscience, in the attempt, as 
has ever appeared; and yet have been compelled to allow the proof texts, 
in most instances, to speak the offensive doctrines, and to content themselves 
with a simple contradiction of them in notes and comments. Interpretation 
according to the obvious import has always resulted in the evangelical 
system; while expositors according to the supposed rational and philosophical 
mode of exposition have differed indefinitely. It is not the evangelical, but 
the liberal rule of interpretation, which has filled the world with divers 
doctrines, perplexity and doubt. All versions, and all expositions according 
to the obvious meaning, of whatever country or age, do substantially agree 
in the evangelical system; and agree with the understanding of mankind at 
large who read the Bible. The Bible, for the most part, was written also 
by men who understood language only according to its obvious import;— 
and for the use of men to whom it must have been a sealed book upon 
any other principle of interpretation. Add to this the testimony of the 
Bible to its own plainness: that it can be read by him that runs; and under- 
stood by the wayfaring man though a fool; that it is a lamp to the path; 
that it furnishes the man of God thoroughly; that it is profitable for doctrine; 
that it is able to make wise to salvation; that it creates obligation to know 
the truth, and renders error inexcusable. Now if the obvious meaning of 
the proof texts be not the true one; and if the true meaning be one which 
can be seen only by men of classical and philosophical vision; then the com- 
mon people have no Bible. For the book itself teaches them nothing; and 
the critical expositions of uninspired men are not a revelation. The character 
of God is also implicated, as having practiced on his subjects a most de- 
plorable deception; as having taught them falsehood in their own tongue, 
and the truth in an unknown tongue; for, to the common people, the 
obvious is the only meaning of terms. If, therefore, the truth is not con- 
tained in the obvious meaning, it is not revealed to them in any form. 
Indeed, if the obvious be not the true import, the Bible teaches them false- 
hood. And yet, with a book, whose only intelligible meaning on the subject 



LYMAN BEECHER I03 

of doctrines is false, and whose real import is necessarily unknown, the 
common people are required, upon pain of his eternal displeasure, to abhor 
error, and to love and obey the truth.— Was the glorious God ever more 
scandalized than by such an imputation? We have heard of his having 
made a great part of mankind on purpose to damn them, and of his sending 
to hell infants and helpless victims, for the nonperformance of impossibilities: 
and, if such were indeed his character and conduct, I know not what other 
Bible we could expect, than one impossible to be understood, and framed 
to deceive. But, on this subject, we adopt the language of a distinguished 
advocate of the liberal system. "It is impossible that a teacher of infinite wis- 
dom should expose those, whom he would teach, to infinite error. He will 
rather surpass all other instructors in bringing down truth to our appre- 
hension. A revelation is a gift of light; it cannot thicken and multiply our 
perplexities."* 

2. It is the uniform testimony of the Bible that the righteous love the 
truth, and that the wicked are opposed to it. 

If then, we can decide who are the wicked, in the Scriptural sense, which 
system they approve, and which they oppose; we have an inspired decision 
which is the faith delivered to the saints. But the Scriptures have decided 
that the irreligious and profane, and all persons of confirmed vicious habits, 
are wicked men. They have placed in the same class the ambitious, who love 
the praise of men more than the praise of God; and the voluptuous, who love 
pleasure more than God. Now that some of this description of sinners are 
found among the professed believers of both systems is admitted; but which 
system do they, as a body, prefer; and against which do they manifest 
unequivocal hostility? It requires no proof, but universal observation, to 
support the position that the irreligious, immoral and voluptuous part of 
the community prefer the liberal system, and are vehement in their opposition 
to the evangelical system. f If this assertion needs confirmation; assemble 
the pleasure-loving and licentious community of the world;— the patrons of 
balls and theatres and masquerades:— and let the doctrines of the evangelical 
system be preached plainly to them. Would they be pleased with them? 
Would they endure them? Do this class of the community, where their 
numbers or influence preponderate, any where, in the wide world, settle 
and support an evangelical minister; and if they support the preaching of 
any system of doctrines, is it not substantially the liberal system? Go to the 

* Channing's Sermon, second Baltimore ed., pp. 12, 13. 

t The reader will observe, that we do not say, nor do we believe it to be true, that 
all, or even the majority, who professedly embrace the liberal system are wicked in 
the sense explained. . . . Our assertion is, that those who are wicked, in the Scripture 
sense of that term, do, as a body, whatever preaching they attend, and with whatever 
denomination they are classed, dislike the doctrines of the evangelical faith and prefer 
those of the liberal system. 



104 RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

voluntary evening association for conference and prayer; and which system 
will you hear breathed out in supplication? Then go to the voluntary 
evening association for gambling or inebriation, and which system, with its 
patrons, will you hear loaded with execration and ridicule? When a division 
is made in a town or parish, by the settlement of a minister of liberal or 
evangelical opinions; which side do a majority of the pious take, if there be 
on earth any such thing as piety manifested by credible evidence; and which 
side do the wicked take, if there be on earth any such class of persons as 
wicked men— proved to be such by their deeds? If a majority is obtained 
against evangelical opinions, was it ever known to be done by the most 
pious and moral part of the community, in opposition to the suffrages of 
the most irreligious and flagitious?* There is, then, some powerful cause, 
of universal operation, which arrays the irreligious part of the community 
against the evangelical system. But, according to the Bible, of two opposing 
systems, one of which must be true, that which the wicked approve is false, 
and that which they oppose and hate is true;— "for he that doeth evil hateth 
the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved." 

3. The evangelical system produces the same effects, universally, as were 
produced by the faith delivered to the saints. 

The maxim, that the same cause, in the same circumstances, will produce 
the same effect, is as true in the moral as in the natural world; the laws of 
mind, and the operation of moral causes, being just as uniform as the laws 
of matter. The Gospel, the greatest moral cause which ever operated in 
the world, is the same now as in the apostolic age; and the heart of man, 
civilized or uncivilized, is also the same. So that this great cause is operating 
now, in substantially the same circumstances as it did in the primitive age;— 
for the heart of man is the moral world, and is the same now as then. If 
there be a system of doctrines, then, at the present time, whose effects are 
universally the same with those produced by the faith once delivered to the 
saints; that system, demonstrably, is the faith which was once delivered to 
the saints. Identity of moral effect proves identity of moral cause. 

* It may not be known to all who read this discourse, that, according to a late 
construction given to the laws of Massachusetts, the town, or society, may dispose of 
the funds which were given to the church; and dismiss or settle a minister without 
the concurrence, and in opposition to, the suffrage of the church. And that, in conse- 
quence of this decision, Unitarian ministers have often been settled by towns and 
societies, in opposition to the efforts of evangelical churches: by which means, they 
have been stripped of their funds, and exiled from their place of worship; and 
subjected to the necessity of forming a new society, and erecting another house of 
worship, unless they would consent to set under Unitarian ministrations, and forego 
that instruction which they considered an important means of salvation. 

Now, in every one of these instances, it is believed, that the immoral and irreligious 
part of the town or society, have united with Unitarians; and sometimes, if not always, 
have contributed to the formation of a majority which could not have been obtained 
without them. . . . 



LYMAN BEECHER I05 

The illustration of the argument from effects must consist of many 
particulars, and of matters of fact. The argument, therefore, can only be 
stated concisely, without attempting to answer every possible objection. 
The facts, too, may be regarded by some as invidious. I have only to say 
that no fact will be stated, as such, which is not believed to be notoriously 
true, and, if denied, capable of unequivocal proof; and as to the invidious 
bearing of matters of fact, or of arguments, I am persuaded it is both a false 
delicacy, and an unsound cause, which would shrink from this test, and 
shield itself under forms of alleged decorum. But I must be allowed to be- 
lieve also, that no real decorum is violated by the statement of facts, or 
the pressure of arguments, where the object is important, the design honest, 
and the manner sober and respectful. Systems of religion, as well as of 
natural philosophy, may be brought to the test of actual experiment. "By 
their fruits shall ye know them." But if the moral world were, by the laws 
of decorum, closed against us; and we might only theorise without upon prac- 
tical tendencies, and not enter it to collect and appeal to facts; we might 
contend earnestly, but certainly should contend to very little purpose. To the 
word and testimony of God, and to matters of fact, we appeal. 

I observe then, that the evangelical system occasions the same objections, 
precisely, now, which were occasioned by the faith once delivered to the 
saints. 

Such an exhibition was given of old of the particular Providence of God, 
as occasioned on the part of thieves, and liars, and adulterers, and idolaters, 
the extenuating plea, "We are delivered to do all these abominations." God 
governs the moral world by such irresistible influence that crimes are as 
much a matter of physical necessity as rain and sunshine. Do I need to say 
to this audience that the charge constantly urged against the Decrees of 
God, as an article of the evangelical system, is that it destroys accountable 
agency, and makes men machines, and all actions necessary by an irresistible 
fatality? The faith delivered to the saints then, and the evangelical faith, 
are perverted, in this article, exactly alike. 

The ancient faith included an article which led the wicked, among the 
Jews, to extenuate their crimes by the allegation, "The fathers have eaten 
sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge"; i.e., 'Sin in man is a 
physical property, transmitted from father to son, as bones and sinews are, 
and alike inconsistent with choice or blame/ And is not the objection urged 
against the doctrine of Original Sin, as contained in the evangelical system, 
the same? The inspired answer to the objection of old was, That children 
are accountable only for their own voluntary exercises and deeds; and this 
is the reply returned now by the patrons of the evangelical system. 

The degree of human Depravity, as taught in the Bible, led the people, 
in a time of great wickedness, to say, "If our transgressions and our sins be 



106 RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

upon us, and we pine away in them and die, how should we then live?" 
i.e., If we be dead in sin, to the exclusion of all spiritual life, how can we 
be free agents, and how can we help ourselves, or be justly blamed?' And, 
as if they had been told by the prophet that their death in sin was voluntary 
and criminal, though entire, and certain in its efficacy; they seem to say, 
Well, if we are so wicked that we certainly shall pine away and die in our 
sins, how can we be to blame? If we shall not turn of ourselves, how can we 
turn; and of what use is ability that will never be exerted?' Now are not 
these precisely the objections which are at this day alleged, constantly, 
against the doctrines of man's entire depravity, and moral inability, as articles 
of the evangelical system? 

Our Saviour asserts the necessity of some great change to qualify a man 
for the kingdom of heaven; which, to a ruler in Israel, appeared mysterious, 
and even impossible. And is there not a great change insisted on, in the 
evangelical system, as indispensable to salvation; to which masters in Israel 
now confess that they are strangers; and which they regard as impossible, 
without the destruction of free agency and accountability? 

The manner of a sinner's Justification was delivered to the saints in such 
terms, as occasioned the objection that it made void the law; superseding 
the obligations and motives to a moral life, and leading to licentiousness. 
"Do we then make void the law through faith?" "Shall we continue in sin 
that grace may abound?" And is not this precisely the objection which has 
been urged against the doctrine of justification by faith, as contained in 
the evangelical system, from the time of the Reformation to this day? 

The saints were taught something concerning the Sovereignty of God, 
as having mercy on whom he would, and punishing whom he would;— 
which produced the objection, "Why then doth he yet find fault; for who 
hath resisted his will?" If wicked men receive their destination as God ap- 
points; why does he blame them? If it be his will that they perish, and they 
do perish; are they not obedient? and why does he find fault?' And is not 
this the objection which is urged, unceasingly, against the doctrine of Elec- 
tion, as taught in the evangelical system? To our reply, that the will of 
God, as a moral rule to man, and the will of God, as a rule of administration 
to himself in disposing of rebels, are distinct; the answer is, 'Metaphysics! 
metaphysics! The will of God is the will of God; and if sinners, in any 
sense, act in accordance with any will of God, they are obedient; and he has 
no cause to find fault.' Now did the liberal exposition of the ninth of Romans 
ever produce, in the whole history of man, the objection which this chapter 
produced as written by the Apostle? or do liberal preachers ever have occasion 
to adopt the reply of Paul to objections produced by their exposition? But 
the evangelical exposition produces, invariably, the same objection which 
the Apostle encountered, and this objection receives, invariably, the same 



LYMAN BEECHER I07 

reply. "Nay, but O man, who art thou that repliest against God?" 'Shall a 
being of yesterday arraign the conduct of his Maker? Shall a rebel sit in 
judgment upon his God? Are not men rebels, justly doomed to die; and, in 
reference to their character and condition as condemned criminals, all clay 
of the same lump? And is not the discretion of God, to pardon or reprieve, 
as absolute as that of the potter over his clay, to make one vessel to honor 
and another to dishonor?' Do you object, that the punishment threatened 
is unjust? But how could God make a vessel of mercy of one whose punish- 
ment would be unjust; or a vessel of wrath of one whose punishment would 
be undeserved? Do you call men Lnpotent because they are compared to 
clay; or assert that the sovereignty of God, in saving some, causes, and 
renders unavoidable, the destruction of others? We reply, those who perish, 
perish for their sins, for which they might have been punished, justly, with- 
out an offer of pardon. They might, if they would, comply with the terms of 
pardon, and are punished for rejecting them. Nor are they cut down in haste. 
With much long-suffering they are endured, while, by despising the riches 
of the goodness of God, they fit themselves for destruction. Such is the 
evangelical reply; and such, as we understand his language and argument, 
is the reply of Paul. . . . 

The faith delivered to the saints occasioned a virulent hatred. It was not 
hatred of it as false, arising from an ardent love of truth: for Pharisees 
and Sadducees could tolerate each other; and Pagans could tolerate thirty 
thousand gods, with all their lust and blood. And is not the evangelical 
system encountered by a virulence of opposition, in circumstances which 
show that it cannot arise from the love of truth or hatred of error? None 
will pretend that the effects of the evangelical system are as deplorable as 
the effects of idolatry in its present forms. The evangelical system has pro- 
duced no temple of impure resort; no gratifications of lust enjoined as acts 
of worship; no blood of human victims; no burning of widows, or drowning 
of infants; no self-inflicted penal tortures. And yet, such is the hatred of 
many to the evangelical system, that they oppose, deliberately, all attempts 
to extend it to the heathen; and on the ground, avowedly, that they had 
rather the heathen would remain as they are, than adopt the evangelical 
system. . . . 

The faith delivered to the saints produced a stricter morality than any 
contemporaneous system. Whether this be true of the evangelical system is 
not to be decided by a comparison of the best characters on one side with 
the most defective on the other; or of individuals of good moral character 
on both sides, of which it is admitted there are many. Nor can the moral 
efficacy of the two systems be decided by the standard of public morality, 
where the evangelical system has prevailed in the early period of life, and 
exerted its influence upon the conscience, and in the formation of moral 



108 ' RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

habits; or where it still prevails to such an extent as to exert a powerful 
modifying influence; and, especially, where the opposite system is of but 
recent public notoriety, and of limited extent. Great moral causes do not 
produce their effects immediately; nor, upon every individual, exactly the 
same effect. Their tendency and efficacy is to be looked for in those com- 
munities where the influence of the two systems has been the most un- 
mingled, and of the longest duration; and also, in those obvious changes in 
a community, which, as one or the other prevails, become apparent. With 
these explanations in view, I remark that the superior moral efficacy of the 
evangelical system is a matter of uneqaivocal concession. In an article on 
predestination in the British Encyclopedia, written, it is said, by Robert 
Forsyth, Esq., a learned civilian, and an infidel; after giving an account 
of the Calvinistic and Arminian system, and the preference to the latter, 
it is said, "There is one remark which we think ourselves in justice bound 
to make. It is this; that, from the easiest ages, down to our own days, if 
we consider the character of the ancient Stoics, the Jewish Essenes, the 
modern Calvinists and Jansenists, compared with that of their antagonists, 
the Epicurians, the Sadducees, the Arminians and the Jesuits; we shall find 
that they have excelled, in no small degree, in the practice of the most 
rigid and respectable virtues; and have been the highest honor to their own 
age, and the best models for imitation to every succeeding age." This is the 
testimony of a philosopher, to the different moral effects of the two systems, 
from the time of Augustine, at least, to the present day. 



The accusations brought against evangelical writers and professors as re- 
quiring too much, or making no sufficient allowance for the weakness of 
human nature; as rigid, austere, enemies to innocent amusements; as setting 
themselves up as better than their neighbors; as righteous over much, are 
also concessions in point: as are also the topics of ridicule, having reference, 
as they do, to the fastidious strictness of our ancestors, and of evangelical 
professors: to which we may add the invidious names given to them, of 
Puritan, Methodist, &c. It appears then, as a matter of fact, that sound 
morality has never, in any country or age, been so elevated, and so extensively 
prevalent, as in those communities where the evangelical doctrines have 
been most universally believed, and most diligently taught, in families and 
schools, and in the sanctuary. It has been said, I am sensible, that these 
salutary effects of the evangelical system are produced by the truths con- 
tained in it in common with the liberal system, and in spite of the errors 
it embraces, and not by them. Does the truth, then, mingled with absurdity 
and falsehood, produce better effects than the truth simple and undefiled, 
as in the liberal system it is claimed to be? If it is the truth, held in common 



LYMAN BEECHER I09 

by the evangelical and liberal systems, which produces these good effects, 
why does not the liberal system alone produce the same effects? Allow me 
to suggest another solution. The evangelical system requires a stricter morality, 
enforced by more powerful motives. It adopts, as its rule, the moral law, 
unmitigated; and its sanctions, of eternal life and eternal death. A law 
which the opposite system regards as too strict, and as set aside or mitigated, 
in accommodation to human frailty; and whose sanctions are regarded as 
nothing;— or as a salutary temporary discipline;— or as annihilation;— or as 
a matter of entire uncertainty. Now is it strange that lax requisitions, and 
feeble, uncertain sanctions, do not produce the strict and vigorous morality 
of the law of God? What would human laws avail, should expositors and 
judges say, 'Men are too wicked to allow of our interpreting the laws 
strictly: they must not be understood to mean exactly what they say, or 
to threaten exactly what they speak: perfect honesty, or truth, or purity, 
is not to be expected; a little fraud, and theft, and perjury, and violence, 
they allow, in accommodation to human weakness; and threaten the greater 
crimes with no punishment, or only a beneficial temporary discipline, or 
exile from the state, or— we know not what'? 

Again, the evangelical system produces the best attendance on the 
public worship of God, and, of course, if the moral tendency of each were 
the same, that would produce the strictest and most general morality, which 
commanded, most extensively and deeply, the attention of men. That the 
doctrines of the evangelical system do this, is claimed by Witherspoon as 
true, in his day, in Scotland; and by Overton as true in England; and is 
admitted by English Unitarian writers, and denied by no one. It is also 
admitted in this country recently, as a matter of notoriety "which none will 
question/' It is accounted for, it must be acknowledged, in a way not favorable 
to the moral tendency of evangelical sentiments. It is on the ground of the 
intolerable strictness of liberal preaching; so strict and terrifying that few, 
besides the more pious and exemplary, can abide it. The whole pleasure- 
loving, voluptuous and dissipated community being driven, panic-struck, 
by Unitarian denunciation, to the horns of the altar in evangelical churches; 
where, by "smooth preaching," and the hope of impunity in sin, their fears 
may be allayed, and their consciences quieted. 

The faith delivered to the saints produced revivals of religion. The preach- 
ing of it was attended with sudden anxieties, and deep convictions of sin, 
and sudden joy in believing; followed by reformation and a holy life. Nor 
was this the effect of miracles, or itself a miraculous event, in the common 
acceptation of the term. Miracles, merely, produced no such effects. It was 
under the preaching of the word that men were pricked in their hearts, 
and cried out, "Men and brethren, what shall we do to be saved?" And 
it was by the moral transformation, which attended the apostolic answer 



IIO RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

to this question, and not by the power of miracles, that the Gospel defied 
opposition, and spread during the first three hundred years. There was no 
resisting it. Conviction attended the word; and a joyful obedience to the 
faith followed. The very chiefs of opposition exchanged their weapons 
of annoyance for the shield of faith, and the sword of the Spirit. And do 
not the same convictions of sin attend the preaching of the evangelical 
system; and does it not extend its victories in the same manner? By argu- 
ment, merely, we convince few, and reclaim none. But there is an efficacy 
in evangelical preaching on the conscience and on the heart; against which 
neither learning, nor talents, nor prejudice, nor wrath itself, afford effectual 
protection. Multitudes who virulently hated, and verily thought that they 
ought to oppose, evangelical doctrines and revivals of religion have been 
convinced of their mistake, and sin; and have embraced, joyfully, the doc- 
trines which they reviled. Many who preach the liberal system can bear 
witness that they have lost, in this way, again and again, the very pillars 
of their societies. Defections of the same kind are frequent still, and clothe 
evangelical doctrines and revivals of religion with a terrifying power. 

The faith delivered to the saints was efficacious in the sudden reformation 
of those who had been long under the dominion of vicious habits. The apostle 
enumerates the habits of crime which prevailed among Pagans; and then, 
writing to the church of Corinth, says, "And such were some of you." But, 
while the liberal system despairs, professedly, of any sudden reformation from 
vicious habits, as against the established laws of the moral world; and is un- 
able to produce an instance in which a vicious person has been reformed, by 
abandoning the evangelical and adopting the liberal system; and while refor- 
mation from vicious habits is a rare event, if it exist at all, under liberal 
preaching; it is a frequent event for profligates, on abandoning their con- 
fidence in the liberal system and adopting the evangelical, to manifest a most 
salutary and abiding change of character and conduct. . . . 

The faith delivered to the saints produced a spirit of missions. On the day 
of Pentecost the number of disciples was one hundred and twenty. And on 
that day the scales of Jewish prejudice fell from their eyes; and the spirit of 
missions descended upon their hearts; and, in three hundred years, without 
colleges, or theological seminaries, or the press, or governmental aid, but in 
opposition to its dire hostility, they evangelized the world. And are not the 
great movements now making to evangelize the world, conducted chiefly un- 
der the auspices and by the charities of those who adopt substantially the 
evangelical system? Are not all the denominations in the world, who believe 
in the Divinity of Christ and his atonement, in the depravity of man and 
his need of a moral renovation by the Spirit; and in the doctrine of justifica- 
tion by faith, and future eternal punishment, more or less engaged in the 
work of missions? And is there, in the wide world, a denomination which 



LYMAN BEECHER 1 1 1 

rejects these doctrines, that is thus engaged? And is this system, which does 
nothing to evangelize the world, the Gospel; and that, which does all that is 
done in accordance with the efforts of the primitive church, not the Gospel? 

The faith delivered to the saints produced a piety of great solemnity, and 
ardor, and decision. It was a piety which took delight in the public worship 
of God, and in frequent private association for religious conference and 
prayer; a piety which included a deep solicitude, and made vigorous exertions, 
for the conversion of sinners, and experienced peculiar joy in the event; a 
piety which espoused openly the cause of Christ, encountered obloquy and 
the loss of all things, and stood undaunted in the face of danger, and produced 
joy unspeakable in the hour of death. And is not this, precisely, the same cast 
of piety which the evangelical system does, and which the liberal system does 
not, produce? Is not the deeply serious cast of the one regarded as constituting 
the evangelical a gloomy religion; and the lighter cast of the other as giving 
to it vastly the preference on the score of cheerfulness? Is not the ardor of 
the one stigmatized as enthusiasm; and the cool, deliberate, intellectual cast 
of the other regarded as giving to it the enviable preeminence of a rational 
religion? Does not the one delight in, and the other deprecate, frequent 
voluntary associations for religious conference and prayer? Does not the one 
ridicule the supposed work of sudden conversion by the Spirit of God, and the 
other hold it in the highest estimation? . . . 

The faith delivered to the saints was attended, from the beginning to the 
end, with an unwavering confidence of its truth. False christs and false 
prophets arose; but they could not "deceive the elect." Winds of false doc- 
trine blew, but they scattered only the chaff; some also made shipwreck of the 
faith, but it was not the saints. There were heresies early; and it was needful 
there should be, that they which were approved might be manifest. And they 
were manifest; for the last Apostle that remained testified, "They went out 
from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no 
doubt have continued with us." But to those who adhered to the faith, he 
said, "Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and know all things": i.e., 'You 
know the truth of all those doctrines which some have rejected/ Now it is 
admitted that some patrons of the evangelical system abandon it. But it will 
not be denied that, as a general fact, they hold the same system of truth to 
the end; modified, explained, and proved, with some variation; but the same 
system undeniably. But can it be said of the patrons of the liberal system, as 
a body, that their system, first and last, is the same? Can it be said of an 
individual scarcely, that he continues to embrace the same system through 
life? . . . 

4. A departure from the faith delivered to the saints, producing divisions 
in the church, was denominated a heresy during the three first centuries. 

This does not prove those doctrines to be false which the churches con- 



112 RELIGIOUS LIBERALISM VS. ORTHODOXY 

demned, because churches and councils are not infallible. But it does prove the 
opinions denominated heretical to be novelties, and in opposition to the re- 
ceived opinion of the church until the time of their condemnation. The declar- 
tion of the primitive church that a doctrine is a heresy is a public formal 
testimony as to what had been, until then, the received opinion of the churches. 

The heretics themselves admitted, sometimes, that their opinions were 
novel, but contended that they were nevertheless true; or, more commonly, 
so explained them as to claim that they were not a departure from the received 
faith. Uniting, of course, the testimony of heretics to that of the church, as 
to what had been the received opinion. 

From the nature, then, and the known era of the several heresies in the 
primitive church, we may ascertain what was the antecedent faith of the 
church, on the points to which they relate. 

The doctrine of the Incarnation of Christ was, then, the received opinion 
of the church, when denied by the Gnostics, towards the close of the first 
century. The Divinity of Christ was the received opinion of the church when 
denied by Arius, a.d. 315; who, soon after, was condemned as a heretic in a 
council of 380 Fathers. And the doctrines of original sin, entire depravity, 
regeneration by special grace, and justification by faith, continued to be the 
received doctrines of the church until the time of Pelagius, about a.d. 400. 

The doctrines of the evangelical system, then, commenced their journey 
down to us from the apostolic age: and as each doctrine of the liberal system 
encountered any one of them, that was declared by the church to be a novelty, 
and the other the antecedently received opinion of the church. Can this fact 
be reconciled with the supposition that the liberal system was the faith first 
delivered to the saints? Did all the churches, from the beginning, misunder- 
stand the import of the Gospels and Epistles, and all the apostolic expositions 
of them; and misunderstand, systematically, and exactly alike, on all points, 
and in direct opposition to what Jesus Christ and the Apostles intended to 
teach; and this too, without concert, and throughout the Roman Empire? Or 
if the liberal was the system first delivered to the saints, could all the churches 
have exchanged it for the opposite system, so early, so silently, so unitedly, as 
to have the whole truth regarded as a novelty, and denounced as a heresy, in 
the second and third and fourth centuries? Dr. Priestley has, indeed, at- 
tempted to show that the liberal system was that which was actually delivered 
by Christ and his Apostles to the saints, and that such a change as we have 
supposed did happen in the progress of two or three hundred years. But, 
beside the utter failure of his proof, he might as well have attempted to show 
that the course of all the rivers in the Roman Empire was reversed during 
the three first centuries of the Christian era, in opposition to the testimony of 
all the historians and naturalists of the empire, convened by public authority 
on purpose to inquire into the matter of fact. 



LYMAN BEECHER I 1 3 

5. It is a point decided by inspiration that the Martyrs who suffered under 
Pagan and Papal persecutions held the same faith; and that the faith which 
they held, and for which they suffered, is the faith which was delivered to the 
saints. The Apostle John saw in vision "under the altar, the souls of them 
that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held." 
It is called in another place, "the commandments of God, and the testimony 
of Jesus Christ." These are the Martyrs under Pagan Rome. But with refer- 
ence to those who suffered afterwards, under Papal Rome, it is said: "Here 
is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of 
God, and the faith of Jesus." The faith, then, which the Martyrs held, under 
Pagan and Papal Rome, and for which they suffered, was the same, and was 
the word of god and the faith of jesus. But we know, by evidence un- 
equivocal and undeniable, that the doctrinal opinions of the Martyrs under 
Papal Rome were the doctrines of the evangelical system, and not those of the 
liberal system. They exist now upon historical records, and in public creeds; 
and are denominated the doctrines of the Reformation. The doctrines of the 
Reformation then, which we denominate the evangelical system, have the 
seal of heaven impressed upon them, as being the word of god and the 

FAITH OF JESUS, THE FAITH WHICH WAS ONCE DELIVERED TO THE SAINTS. 



THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF 
THE CONSTITUTION 



It was the autumn of 1832 when South Carolina legis- 
lators summoned a state convention to exercise its right 
as a sovereign power to veto an act of the United States 
Congress. The Convention quickly drafted an Ordinance 
of Nullification that declared the Tariff Acts of 1828 and 
1832 unconstitutional, forbade collection of duties at 
South Carolina forts, imposed a test or loyalty oath on 
state officials, and threatened secession if the Federal 
Government tried to enforce the Acts. 

Nullification had been bubbling ominously for years. 
When it boiled over, no one was caught by surprise, least 
of all the President of the United States. Andrew Jackson 
promptly issued a ringing proclamation, warning the 
people of South Carolina that they had been led by de- 
signing leaders to the brink of treason, and that the 
Federal Government would use troops to collect duties 
and maintain the Union. At once, South Carolina set 
about raising troops to repel "invasion." 

Jackson was dead sure that the Vice-President of the 
United States, John C. Calhoun, was the arch-traitor and 
villain in the piece. There had been bad blood between 
the two for years; the feud was personal and political. A 
Southerner himself, Jackson was a states-rights man up to 
a point, but he would countenance no threat to the na- 
tion's sovereignty. This he had made clear at a Jefferson 
birthday dinner in 1830, when, with his eyes fixed on the 

114 



THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 115 

Vice-President, he offered a toast: "Our Federal Union- 
it must he preserved!" Calhoun replied: "The Union- 
next to our liberty, the most dear!" 

Through the years, Calhoun had undergone political 
metamorphosis. In 1811 he entered Congress an ardent 
nationalist. After the War of 1812, he was all for unify- 
ing the nation and strengthening its economy through a 
protective tariff, a national hank, and a program of in- 
ternal improvements. Out of Congress between 1817 and 
1832, Calhoun served successively as Secretary of War 
and Vice-President, and Henry Clay took over leadership 
of the grandiose program of national development, which 
he called The American System. In 1824 and 1828 Con- 
gress enacted further tariff legislation that hiked rates, 
the 1828 Act being the famous or infamous Tariff of 
Abominations. This did it. 

Antiprotection sentiment was rife in the Smith; South 
Carolina was explosive. The state had failed to develop 
the balanced economy Calhoun hoped for when he 
pushed the 18 16 Tariff Act. By 1828 its economic position 
had deteriorated badly, principally because of its land- 
destroying cotton culture. Mulling over their declining 
position, South Carolinians viewed with jaundiced eyes 
the growing prosperity among manufacturing states. In- 
flated pride and empty pocketbooks goaded them into 
seeking some external reason for their plight. They 
reached the settled conviction that it was discriminatory 
tariff legislation that made them a tributary to the North. 

As Calhoun's political views shifted to coincide with 
those dominant in his state, the former nationalist cap- 
tured the intellectual and political leadership of the states- 
rights movement. While occupying the Vice-President's 
chair he secretly wrote The South Carolina Exposition in 
1828, a doctrine of nullification for the benefit of South 
Carolina legislators. It contained two basic propositions: 
The Federal Constitution is a compact between states, not 



lib THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

an instrument of "we the people"; and each sovereign 
state retains its power to judge the constitutionality of an 
act of Congress. In short, the Federal Government was 
only an agent of the states; each state had the authority 
to veto an act of its agent. A nullified law would become 
binding only if it were subsequently adopted as an in- 
terpretative amendment by three-fourths of the states. 

Calhoun and his henchmen succeeded in holding the 
lid on South Carolina while they looked westward for 
friends in Congress to help roll back the tariff. The West, 
too, had its grievances against the manufacturing East. 
Western congressmen chafed with suspicion that indus- 
trial states were blocking migration to the land of Eden. 
These suspicions seemed justified when, on December 
29, 1829, Senator Foote of Connecticut offered a resolu- 
tion to inquire into the expediency of limiting the sale of 
lands in the public domain to those already on the market, 
and to abolish the office of Surveyor-General. Senator 
Benton of Missouri, quick to denounce this resolution as 
an Eastern plot to keep exploited laborers from settling 
in the West, openly invited the South to make common 
cause against the East. Responding to Benton's overture, 
Senator Robert Y. Wayne of South Carolina flirted with 
Benton and his friends while making as much mischief as 
he coidd between West and East. Wayne's attacks on 
New England and his defense of nullification brought 
Daniel Webster into the act. Webster pulled the debate 
from its wayward course and placed it on an ideological 
basis. For years he had expounded constitutional theory 
before the Supreme Court. Now, in his Second Reply to 
Wayne, he was out to win his case for Federal sovereignty 
in Congress and before the bar of public opinion. Al- 
though Webster's patriotic plea for national unity re- 
sounded through the country, it fell on deaf ears in South 
Carolina. 

The Tariff Act of 1832 dashed southern hopes for sub- 



THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 117 

stantial downward revision. With no further faith in 
Jackson or sectional alliances, South Carolina flumped 
for nullification. Calhoun, too, had come to the fork in 
his political roads. He resigned from the Vice-Presidency 
in December, 1832, whereupon South Carolina promptly 
sent him to the United States Senate to replace Robert 
Wayne, now Governor. 

Amidst rumors that he would be arrested for treason, 
Calhoun returned to Washington filled wtih apprehen- 
sion. On January 4, 1833, this gaunt, intense man walked 
unfalteringly into the tense Senate chamber, over which 
he had presided for nearly eight years, presented his 
credentials and took a solemn oath to uphold and defend 
the Constitution. The ice broken, he plunged into legis- 
lative business. 

Against the background of nullification the Congress 
busied itself with two matters of overriding importance. 
Compromise tariff legislation was in the making. Success 
was assured when Henry Clay, great in reputation for 
The American System and as engineer of compromise, 
took charge. Amidst this promising activity, Jackson re- 
quested sweeping authority to use force against South 
Carolina if it resisted Federal authority. Since everyone , 

knew that South Carolina would revoke its Ordinance of 
Nullification when a tariff bill with lower rates was 
passed, and since everyone knew that Jackson would not 
be called upon to use force, the request was inflammatory. 
It brought Calhoun to his feet. On January 22, he intro- 
duced three resolutions which pinpointed his constitu- 
tional theory and which, if adopted, would compel the 
rejection of Jackson's "force bill." 

Senators jockeyed for position in the unfolding debate. 
Not until February 15, 1833 was it possible for Calhoun 
to launch his major speech against the force bill and in 
behalf of his January 22 resolutions. Meanwhile con- 
gressional and public anticipation mounted. Symboli- 



Il8 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

cally, the worst storm of the winter raged outside the 
capitol building on February 15, when Calhoun opened 
his two-day argument inside the densely packed Senate 
chamber. On the first day he pursued a thread of consti- 
tutional argument while rationalizing his past political 
career, particularly his part in the Tariff Act of 1816. 
With passion, he denounced the force bill: 

And how is it proposed to preserve the Union? By force! 
Does any man in his senses believe that this beautiful 
structure, this harmonious aggregate of States, produced by 
joint consent of all, can be preserved by force? Its very 
introduction will be certain destruction of this Federal Union. 
No, no; you cannot keep the States united in their consti- 
tutional and federal bonds by force. Force may, indeed, 
hold the parts together; but such union would be the bond 
between master and slave; a union of exaction on one side, 
and of unqualified obedience on the other. 

The next day, February 16 , Calhoun focused sharply 
upon constitutional theory by which this "aggregate of 
States, produced by joint consent of all" could be main- 
tained. His answer revolved about the question, how may 
a minority protect its rights against the tyranny of the 
majority? The question was ancient, but never before had 
it been pressed with such vigor or rigor in public debate. 
Although the nub of his states-rights doctrine derived 
from the Virginia and Kentucky resolves of 1798, Cal- 
houn's brilliant mind expanded the doctrine by project- 
ing an elaborate system for distibuting power through the 
methods of nullification and concurrent majorities. 

The logic of events cast Daniel Webster into the role 
of Calhoun's chief opponent. Webster's stirring replies 
to Wayne in 1830 had won for him the title Defender of 
the Constitution. Now he faced a serious psychological 
hazard, however, for his reply to Calhoun might turn out 
to be an anticlimax to his Second Reply to Hayne. Now, 
too, he faced the real intellectual leader of the South 
Carolina doctrine. Webster spoke for one hour immedi- 



THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 119 

ately after Calhoun had finished, and then the Senate 
recessed. At pve o'clock, Webster resumed his argument 
and completed the address at eight in the evening. 

Wisely, Webster attempted no tour de force for popu- 
lar consumption. Wisely, he directed his shafts at Cal- 
houn's interpretative resolutions and arguments on con- 
stitutional theory, eschewing argument on particulars of 
the force bill itself. Step by step, Webster pursued his 
sober legal analysis of the Constitution to prove that it 
was truly the organic law of the land and the foundation 
for federal sovereignty. He dissected Calhoun's premises 
and their consequences to show that they led backwards 
toward the feeble and impotent Confederacy that pre- 
ceded the Constitution, and ultimately to revolution. 

The controversy between Calhoun and Webster over 
the Constitution was the high point in the debate, which 
petered out in February. Congress passed Clay's com- 
promise tariff bill which in turn opened the way for 
South Carolina's repeal of its Ordinance of Nullification. 
Congress also passed Jackson's force bill, which South 
Carolina promptly nullified without reprisal. 

The tempest subsided temporarily, but clouds hung 
oppressively at the horizon. Ultimately the entire South 
was swept up into the currents of Calhoun's thinking and 
driven onto the rocks of secession. It was Webster's con- 
stitutional theory that weathered the storms of the cen- 
tury. 



The Compact Theory of the Constitution 
JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN 



Born, Abbeville district, South Carolina, March 18, 1782; 
died, Washington, D.C., March 30, 1850. Graduated 
from Yale, 1804; attended law school, Litchfield, Connec- 
ticut. Admitted to South Carolina bar, 1807. Member of 
South Carolina legislature, 1808-1809; of United States 
House of Representatives, 1811-1817. Secretary of War, 
181 7-1 825. Vice-President of United States, 1 825-1 832. 
United States Senator, 183 2- 1844. Secretary of State, 
1844-1845. United States Senator, 1845-1850. Foremost 
exponent of states-rights doctrine after 1828. 



H 



aving supplied the omissions of yesterday, I now 
resume the subject at the point where my remarks 
then terminated. The Senate will remember that I stated, at their close, that 
the great question at issue is, whether ours is a federal or a consolidated 
system of government; a system in which the parts, to use the emphatic 
language of Mr. Palgrave, are the integers, and the whole the multiple, or 
in which the whole is an unit and the parts the fractions. I stated, that on 
the decision of this question, I believed, depended not only the liberty and 
prosperity of this country, but the place which we are destined to hold in 
the intellectual and moral scale of nations. I stated, also, in my remarks on 
this point, that there is a striking analogy between this and the great struggle 

The United States Senate, February 15 and 16, 1833, on the Revenue Collection 
Bill (Force Bill). Except for the omission of introductory references to his speech of 
the previous day, this is a complete text of Calhoun's remarks on February 16. The 
Works of John C. Calhoun, Richard K. Cralle, ed. (New York: D. Appleton and 
Company, 1853), II, pp. 197-262. See also Register of Debates in Congress, 22nd Cong., 
2nd Sess., pp. 519-533. Cralle took the liberty of casting the reporter's version into 
the first person. 

120 



JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN 121 

between Persia and Greece, which was decided by the battles of Marathon, 
Platea, and Salamis, and which immortalized the names of Miltiades and 
Themistocles. I illustrated this analogy by showing that centralism or con- 
solidation, with the exception of a few nations along the eastern borders of 
the Mediterranean, has been the pervading principle in the Asiatic govern- 
ments, while the federal system, or, what is the same in principle, that sys- 
tem which organizes a community in reference to its parts, has prevailed in 
Europe. 

Among the few exceptions in the Asiatic nations, the government of the 
twelve tribes of Israel, in its early period, is the most striking. Their govern- 
ment, at first, was a mere confederation without any central power, till a 
military chieftain, with the title of king, was placed at its head, without, 
however, merging the original organization of the twelve distinct tribes. 
This was the commencement of that central action among that peculiar 
people which, in three generations, terminated in a permanent division of 
their tribes. It is impossible even for a careless reader to peruse the history of 
that event without being forcibly struck with the analogy in the causes which 
led to their separation, and those which now threaten us with a similar 
calamity. With the establishment of the central power in the king commenced 
a system of taxation, which, under King Solomon, was greatly increased, to 
defray the expenses of rearing the temple, of enlarging and embellishing 
Jerusalem, the seat of the central government, and the other profuse ex- 
penditures of his magnificent reign. Increased taxation was followed by its 
natural consequences— discontent and complaint, which, before his death, 
began to excite resistance. On the succession of his son, Rehoboam, the ten 
tribes, headed by Jeroboam, demanded a reduction of the taxes; the temple 
being finished, and the embellishment of Jerusalem completed, and the 
money which had been raised for that purpose being no longer required, or, 
in other words, the debt being paid, they demanded a reduction of the duties 
—a repeal of the tariff. The demand was taken under consideration, and after 
consulting the old men, the counsellors of '98, who advised a reduction, he 
then took the opinion of the younger politicians, who had since grown up, 
and knew not the doctrines of their father; he hearkened unto their counsel, 
and refused to make the reduction, and the secession of the ten tribes under 
Jeroboam followed. The tribes of Judah and Benjamin, which had received 
the disbursements, alone remained to the house of David. 

But to return to the point immediately under consideration. I know that 
it is not only the opinion of a large majority of our country, but it may be 
said to be the opinion of the age, that the very beau ideal of a perfect govern- 
ment is the government of a majority, acting through a representative body, 
without check or limitation on its power; yet, if we may test this theory by 
experience and reason, we shall find that, so far from being perfect, the neces- 



122 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

sary tendency of all governments, based upon the will of an absolute majority, 
without constitutional check or limitation of power, is to faction, corruption, 
anarchy, and despotism; and this, whether the will of the majority be ex- 
pressed directly through an assembly of the people themselves, or by their 
representatives. I know that, in venturing this assertion, I utter what is 
unpopular both within and without these walls; but where truth and liberty 
are concerned, such considerations should not be regarded. I will place the 
decision of this point on the fact that no government of the kind, among 
the many attempts which have been made, has ever endured for a single 
generation, but, on the contrary has invariably experienced the fate which I 
have assigned to it. Let a single instance be pointed out, and I will surrender 
my opinion. But, if we had not the aid of experience to direct our judgment, 
reason itself would be a certain guide. The view which considers the com- 
munity as an unit, and all its parts as having a similar interest, is radically 
erroneous. However small the community may be, and however homogen- 
eous its interests, the moment that government is put into operation— as soon 
as it begins to collect taxes and to make appropriations— the different portions 
of the community must, of necessity, bear different and opposing relations 
in reference to the action of the government. There must inevitably spring 
up two interests— a direction and a stockholder interest— an interest profiting 
by the action of the government, and interested in increasing its powers and 
action; and another, at whose expense the political machine is kept in motion. 
I know how difficult it is to communicate distinct ideas on such a subject, 
through the medium of general propositions, without particular illustration; 
and in order that I may be distinctly understood, though at the hazard of 
being tedious, I will illustrate the important principle which I have ven- 
tured to advance, by examples. 

Let us, then, suppose a small community of five persons, separated from 
the rest of the world; and, to make the example strong, let us suppose them 
all to be engaged in the same pursuit, and to be of equal wealth. Let us 
further suppose that they determine to govern the community by the will of 
a majority; and, to make the case as strong as possible, let us suppose that the 
majority, in order to meet the expenses of the government, lay an equal 
tax, say of one hundred dollars on each individual of this little community. 
Their treasury would contain five hundred dollars. Three are a majority; and 
they, by supposition, have contributed three hundred as their portion, and 
the other two (the minority), two hundred. The three have the right to make 
the appropriations as they may think proper. The question is, How would 
the principle of the absolute and unchecked majority operate, under these 
circumstances, in this little community? If the three be governed by a sense 
of justice— if they should appropriate the money to the objects for which it 
was raised, the common and equal benefit of the five, then the object of the 



JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN 1 23 

association would be fairly and honestly effected, and each would have a 
common interest in the government. But, should the majority pursue an 
opposite course— should they appropriate the money in a manner to benefit 
their own particular interest, without regard to the interest of the two (and 
that they will so act, unless there be some efficient check, he who best knows 
human nature will least doubt), who does not see that the three and the 
two would have directly opposite interests in reference to the action of the 
government? The three who contribute to the common treasury but three 
hundred dollars, could, in fact, by appropriating the five hundred to their 
own use, convert the action of the government into the means of making 
money, and, of consequence, would have a direct interest in increasing the 
taxes. They put in three hundred and take out five; that is, they take back 
to themselves all that they put in, and, in addition, that which was put in 
by their associates; or, in other words, taking taxation and appropriation 
together, they have gained, and their associates have lost, two hundred dollars 
by the fiscal action of the government. Opposite interests, in reference to 
the action of the government, are thus created between them : the one having 
an interest in favor, and the other against the taxes; the one to increase, and 
the other to decrease the taxes; the one to retain the taxes when the money 
is no longer wanted, and the other to repeal them when the objects for which 
they were levied have been secured. 

Let us now suppose this community of five to be raised to twenty-four 
individuals, to be governed, in like manner, by the will of a majority: it is 
obvious that the same principle would divide them into two interests— into 
a majority and a minority, thirteen against eleven, or in some other propor- 
tion; and that all the consequences which I have shown to be applicable to 
the small community of five would be applicable to the greater, the cause 
not depending upon the number, but resulting necessarily from the action 
of the government itself. Let us now suppose that, instead of governing 
themselves directly in an assembly of the whole, without the intervention of 
agents, they should adopt the representative principle; and that, instead of 
being governed by a majority of themselves, they should be governed by a 
majority of their representatives. It is obvious that the operation of the sys- 
tem would not be affected by the change: the representatives being respon- 
sible to those who chose them, would conform to the will of their con- 
stitutents, and would act as they would do were they present and acting for 
themselves; and the same conflict of interest, which we have shown would 
exist in one case, would equally exist in the other. In either case, the in- 
evitable result would be a system of hostile legislation on the part of the 
majority, or the stronger interest, against the minority, or the weaker interest; 
the object of which, on the part of the former, would be to exact as much 
as possible from the latter, which would necessarily be resisted by all the 



124 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

means in their power. Warfare, by legislation, would thus be commenced 
between the parties, with the same object, and not less hostile than that 
which is carried on between distinct and rival nations— the only distinction 
would be in the instruments and the mode. Enactments, in the one case, 
would supply what could only be effected by arms in the other; and the 
inevitable operation would be to engender the most hostile feelings between 
the parties, which would merge every feeling of patriotism— that feeling 
which embraces the whole— and substitute in its place the most violent party 
attachment; and instead of having one common centre of attachment, around 
which the affections of the community might rally, there would in fact be 
two— the interests of the majority, to which those who constitute that major- 
ity would be more attached than they would be to the whole,— and that of 
the minority, to which they, in like manner, would also be more attached 
than to the interests of the whole. Faction would thus take the place of 
patriotism; and, with the loss of patriotism, corruption must necessarily fol- 
low, and in its train, anarchy, and, finally, despotism, or the establishment of 
absolute power in a single individual, as a means of arresting the conflict of 
hostile interests; on the principle that it is better to submit to the will of a 
single individual, who by being made lord and master of the whole com- 
munity, would have an equal interest in the protection of all the parts. 

Let us next suppose that, in order to avert the calamitous train of conse- 
quences, this little community should adopt a written constitution, with 
limitations restricting the will of the majority, in order to protect the min- 
ority against the oppression which I have shown would necessarily result 
without such restrictions. It is obvious that the case would not be in the 
slightest degree varied, if the majority be left in possession of the right of 
judging exclusively of the extent of its powers, without any right on the 
part of the minority to enforce the restrictions imposed by the constitution on 
the will of the majority. The point is almost too clear for illustration. Nothing 
can be more certain than that, when a constitution grants power, and im- 
poses limitations on the exercise of that power, whatever interests may obtain 
possession of the government, will be in favor of extending the power at the 
expense of the limitation; and that, unless those in whose behalf the limita- 
tions were imposed have, in some form or mode, the right of enforcing them, 
the power will ultimately supersede the limitation, and the government must 
operate precisely in the same manner as if the will of the majority governed 
without constitution or limitation of power. 

I have thus presented all possible modes in which a government founded 
upon the will of an absolute majority will be modified; and have demon- 
strated that, in all its forms, whether in a majority of the people, as in a mere 
Democracy, or in a majority of their representatives, without a constitution 
or with a constitution, to be interpreted as the will of the majority, the result 



JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN I25 

will be the same: two hostile interests will inevitably be created by the action 
of the government, to be followed by hostile legislation, and that by faction, 
corruption, anarchy, and despotism. 

The great and solemn question here presents itself, Is there any remedy 
for these evils? on the decision of which depends the question, whether the 
people can govern themselves, which has been so often asked with so much 
skepticism and doubt. There is a remedy, and but one,— the effect of which, 
whatever may be the form, is to organize society in reference to this conflict 
of interests, which springs out of the action of government; and which can 
only be done by giving to each part the right of self -protection; which, in a 
word, instead of considering the community of twenty-four a single com- 
munity, having a common interest, and to be governed by the single will of 
an entire majority, shall upon all questions tending to bring the parts into 
conflict, the thirteen against the eleven, take the will, not of the twenty-four 
as a unit, but of the thirteen and of the eleven separately,— the majority of 
each governing the parts, and where they concur, governing the whole,— and 
where they disagree, arresting the action of the government. This I will call 
the concurring, as distinct from the absolute majority. In either way the 
number would be the same, whether taken as the absolute or as the con- 
curring majority. Thus, the majority of the thirteen is seven, and of the 
eleven six; and the two together make thirteen, which is the majority of 
twenty-four. But, though the number is the same, the mode of counting is 
essentially different: the one representing the strongest interest, and the 
other, the entire interests of the community. The first mistake is, in supposing 
that the government of the absolute majority is the government of the people 
—that beau ideal of a perfect government which has been so enthusiastically 
entertained in every age by the generous and patriotic, where civilization and 
liberty have made the smallest progress. There can be no greater error: the 
government of the people is the government of the whole community— of the 
twenty-four— the self-government of all the parts— too perfect to be reduced 
to practice in the present, or any past stage of human society. The govern- 
ment of the absolute majority, instead of being the government of the 
people, is but the government of the strongest interests, and, when not effi- 
ciently checked, is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised. 
Between this ideal perfection on the one side, and despotism on the other, 
no other system can be devised but that which considers society in reference 
to its parts, as differently affected by the action of the government, and 
which takes the sense of each part separately, and thereby the sense of the 
whole, in the manner already illustrated. 

These principles, as I have already stated, are not affected by the number 
of which the community may be composed, but are just as applicable to one 
of thirteen millions— the number which composes ours— as of the small com- 



126 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

munity of twenty-four, which I have supposed for the purpose of illustra- 
tion; and are not less applicable to the twenty-four States united in one 
community, than to the case of the twenty-four individuals. There is, indeed, 
a distinction between a large and a small community, not affecting the prin- 
ciple, but the violence of the action. In the former, the similarity of the 
interests of all the parts will limit the oppression from the hostile action of 
the parts, in a great degree, to the fiscal action of the government merely; 
but in the large community, spreading over a country of great extent, and 
having a great diversity of interests, with different kinds of labor, capital, 
and production, the conflict and oppression will extend, not only to a monop- 
oly of the appropriations on the part of the stronger interests, but will end 
in unequal taxes, and a general conflict between the entire interests of con- 
flicting sections, which, if not arrested by the most powerful checks, will 
terminate in the most oppressive tyranny that can be conceived, or in the 
destruction of the community itself. 

If we turn our attention from these supposed cases, and direct it to our 
government and its actual operation, we shall find a practical confirmation 
of the truth of what has been stated, not only of the oppressive operation of 
the system of an absolute majority, but also a striking and beautiful illustra- 
tion, in the formation of our system, of the principle of the concurring major- 
ity, as distinct from the absolute, which I have asserted to be the only means 
of efficiently checking the abuse of power, and, of course, the only solid 
foundation of constitutional liberty. That our government, for many years, 
has been gradually verging to consolidation; that the constitution has grad- 
ually become a dead letter; and that all restrictions upon the power of 
government have been virtually removed, so as practically to convert the 
General Government into a government of an absolute majority, without 
check or limitation, cannot be denied by any one who has impartially ob- 
served its operation. 

It is not necessary to trace the commencement and gradual progress of the 
causes which have produced this change in our system; it is sufficient to state 
that the change has taken place within the last few years. What has been 
the result? Precisely that which might have been anticipated: the growth of 
faction, corruption, anarchy, and, if not despotism itself, its near approach, 
as witnessed in the provisions of this bill. And from what have these con- 
sequences sprung? We have been involved in no war. We have been at peace 
with all the world. We have been visited with no national calamity. Our 
people have been advancing in general intelligence, and, I will add, as great 
and alarming as has been the advance of political corruption among the 
mercenary corps who look to Government for support, the morals and virtue 
of the community at large have been advancing in improvement. What, I 
again repeat, is the cause? No other can be assigned but a departure from 



JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN 11J 

the fundamental principles of the constitution, which has converted the 
Government into the will of an absolute and irresponsible majority, and 
which, by the laws that must inevitably govern in all such majorities, has 
placed in conflict the great interests of the country, by a system of hostile 
legislation, by an oppressive and unequal imposition of taxes, by unequal 
and profuse appropriations, and by rendering the entire labor and capital of 
the weaker interest subordinate to the stronger. 

This is the cause, and these the fruits, which have converted the Govern- 
ment into a mere instrument of taking money from one portion of the com- 
munity, to be given to another; and which has rallied around it a great, a 
powerful, and mercenary corps of office-holders, office-seekers, and expectants, 
destitute of principle and patriotism, and who have no standard of morals or 
politics but the will of the Executive— the will of him who has the distribution 
of the loaves and the fishes. I hold it impossible for any one to look at the 
theoretical illustration of the principle of the absolute majority in the cases 
which I have supposed, and not be struck with the practical illustration in 
the actual operation of our Government. Under every circumstance, the ab- 
solute majority will ever have its American system (I mean nothing offensive 
to any Senator); but the real meaning of the American system is, that system 
of plunder which the strongest interest has ever waged, and will ever wage, 
against the weaker, where the latter is not armed with some efficient and 
constitutional check to arrest its action. Nothing but such check on the part 
of the weaker interest can arrest it: mere constitutional limitations are wholly 
insufficient. Whatever interest obtains possession of the Government, will, 
from the nature of things, be in favor of the powers, and against the limita- 
tions imposed by the constitution, and will resort to every device that can be 
imagined to remove those restraints. On the contrary, the opposite interest, 
that which I have designated as the stockholding interest, the tax-payers, 
those on whom the system operates, will resist the abuse of powers, and con- 
tend for the limitations. And it is on this point, then, that the contest be- 
tween the delegated and the reserved powers will be waged; but in this 
contest, as the interests in possession of the Government are organized and 
armed by all its powers and patronage, the opposite interest, if not in like 
manner organized and possessed of a power to protect themselves under the 
provisions of the constitution, will be as inevitably crushed as would be a 
band of unorganized militia when opposed by a veteran and trained corps of 
regulars. Let it never be forgotten, that power can only be opposed by power, 
organization by organization; and on this theory stands our beautiful federal 
system of Government. No free system was ever further removed from the 
principle that the absolute majority, without check or limitation, ought to 
govern. To understand what our Government is, we must look to the con- 
stitution, which is the basis of the system. I do not intend to enter into any 



128 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

minute examination of the origin and the source of its powers: it is sufficient 
for my purpose to state, what I do fearlessly, that it derived its power from 
the people of the separate States, each ratifying by itself, each binding itself 
by its own separate majority, through its separate convention,— the concur- 
rence of the majorities of the several States forming the constitution;— thus 
taking the sense of the whole by that of the several parts, representing the 
various interests of the entire community. It was this concurring and perfect 
majority which formed the constitution, and not that majority which would 
consider the American people as a single community, and which, instead of 
representing fairly and fully the interests of the whole, would but represent, 
as has been stated, the interests of the stronger section. No candid man can 
dispute that I have given a correct description of the constitution-making 
power: that power which created and organized the Government, which 
delegated to it, as a common agent, certain powers, in trust for the common 
good of all the States, and which imposed strict limitations and checks against 
abuses and usurpations. In administering the delegated powers, the constitu- 
tion provides, very properly, in order to give promptitude and efficiency, that 
the Government shall be organized upon the principle of the absolute major- 
ity, or, rather, of two absolute majorities combined: a majority of the States 
considered as bodies politic, which prevails in this body; and a majority of 
the people of the States, estimated in federal numbers, in the other House 
of Congress. A combination of the two prevails in the choice of the President, 
and, of course, in the appointment of Judges, they being nominated by the 
President and confirmed by the Senate. It is thus that the concurring and the 
absolute majorities are combined in one complex system: the one in forming 
the constitution, and the other in making and executing the laws; thus 
beautifully blending the moderation, justice, and equity of the former, and 
more perfect majority, with the promptness and energy of the latter, but less 
perfect. 

To maintain the ascendency of the constitution over the law-making 
majority is the great and essential point, on which the success of the system 
must depend. Unless that ascendency can be preserved, the necessary con- 
sequence must be, that the laws will supersede the constitution; and, finally, 
the will of the Executive, by the influence of his patronage, will supersede 
the laws— indications of which are already perceptible. This ascendency can 
only be preserved through the action of the States as organized bodies, having 
their own separate governments, and possessed of the right, under the struc- 
ture of our system, of judging of the extent of their separate powers, and of 
interposing their authority to arrest the unauthorized enactments of the 
General Government within their respective limits. I will not enter, at this 
time, into the discussion of this important point, as it has been ably and fully 
presented by the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bibb), and others who pre- 



JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN 1 29 

ceded him in this debate on the same side, whose arguments not only remain 
unanswered, but are unanswerable. It is only by this power of interposition 
that the reserved rights of the States can be peacefully and efficiently pro- 
tected against the encroachments of the General Government— that the limita- 
tions imposed upon its authority can be enforced, and its movements confined 
to the orbit allotted to it by the constitution. 

It has, indeed, been said in debate, that this can be effected by the or- 
ganization of the General Government itself, particularly by the action of 
this body, which represents the States— and that the States themselves must 
look to the General Government for the preservation of many of the most 
important of their reserved rights. I do not underrate the value to be attached 
to the organic arrangement of the General Government, and the wise dis- 
tribution of its powers between the several departments, and, in particular, 
the structure and the important functions of this body; but to suppose that 
the Senate, or any department of this Government, was intended to be the 
only guardian of the reserved rights, is a great and fundamental mistake. The 
Government, through all its departments, represents the delegated, and not 
the reserved powers; and it is a violation of the fundamental principle of free 
institutions to suppose that any but the responsible representative of any 
interest can be its guardian. The distribution of the powers of the General 
Government, and its organization, were arranged to prevent the abuse of 
power in fulfilling the important trusts confided to it, and not, as preposter- 
ously supposed, to protect the reserved powers, which are confided wholly 
to the guardianship of the several States. 

Against the view of our system which I have presented, and the right of 
the States to interpose, it is objected that it would lead to anarchy and dis- 
solution. I consider the objection as without the slightest foundation; and 
that, so far from tending to weakness or disunion, it is the source of the 
highest power and the strongest cement. Nor is its tendency in this respect 
difficult of explanation. The government of an absolute majority, unchecked 
by efficient constitutional restraints, though apparently strong is, in reality, 
an exceedingly feeble government. That tendency to conflict between the 
parts, which I have shown to be inevitable in such governments, wastes the 
powers of the state in the hostile action of contending factions, which leaves 
very little more power than the excess of the strength of the majority over 
the minority. But a government based upon the principle of the concurring 
majority, where each great interest possesses within itself the means of self- 
protection, which ultimately requires the mutual consent of all the parts, 
necessarily causes that unanimity in council, and ardent attachment of all the 
parts to the whole, which give an irresistible energy to a government so con- 
stituted. I might appeal to history for the truth of these remarks, of which 
the Roman furnishes the most familiar and striking proofs. It is a well-known 



130 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

fact, that, from the expulsion of the Tarquins to the time of the establishment 
of the tribunitian power, the government fell into a state of the greatest 
disorder and distraction, and, I may add, corruption. How did this happen? 
The explanation will throw important light on the subject under consider- 
ation. The community was divided into two parts— the Patricians and the 
Plebeians; with the power of the state principally in the hands of the former, 
without adequate checks to protect the rights of the latter. The result was as 
might be expected. The patricians converted the powers of the government 
into the means of making money, to enrich themselves and their dependents. 
They, in a word, had their American system, growing out of the peculiar 
character of the government and condition of the country. This requires 
explanation. At that period, according to the laws of nations, when one nation 
conquered another, the lands of the vanquished belonged to the victor; and, 
according to the Roman law, the lands thus acquired were divided into two 
parts— one allotted to the poorer class of the people, and the other assigned 
to the use of the treasury,— of which the patricians had the distribution and 
administration. The patricians abused their power by withholding from the 
plebeians that which ought to have been allotted to them, and by converting 
to their own use that which ought to have gone to the treasury. In a word, 
they took to themselves the entire spoils of victory,— and had thus the most 
powerful motive to keep the state perpetually involved in war, to the utter 
impoverishment and oppression of the plebeians. After resisting the abuse of 
power by all peaceable means, and the oppression becoming intolerable, the 
plebeians, at last, withdrew from the city— they, in a word, seceded; and to 
induce them to reunite, the patricians conceded to them, as the means of 
protecting their separate interests, the very power, which I contend is neces- 
sary to protect the rights of the States, but which is now represented as 
necessarily leading to disunion. They granted to them the right of choosing 
three tribunes from among themselves, whose persons should be sacred, and 
who should have the right of interposing their veto, not only against the 
passage of laws, but even against their execution— a power which those, who 
take a shallow insight into human nature, would pronounce inconsistent 
with the strength and unity of the state, if not utterly impracticable; yet so 
far from this being the effect, from that day the genius of Rome became 
ascendant, and victory followed her steps till she had established an almost 
universal dominion. How can a result so contrary to all anticipation be ex- 
plained? The explanation appears to me to be simple. No measure or move- 
ment could be adopted without the concurring assent of both the patricians 
and plebeians, and each thus became dependent on the other; and, of con- 
sequence, the desire and objects of neither could be effected without the 
concurrence of the other. To obtain this concurrence, each was compelled 
to consult the goodwill of the other, and to elevate to office, not those only 



JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN 13 1 

who might have the confidence of the order to which they belonged, but 
also that of the other. The result was, that men possessing those qualities 
which would naturally command confidence— moderation, wisdom, justice, 
and patriotism— were elevated to office; and the weight of their authority and 
the prudence of their counsel, combined with that spirit of unanimity neces- 
sarily resulting from the concurring assent of the two orders, furnish the real 
explanation of the power of the Roman State, and of that extraordinary 
wisdom, moderation, and firmness which in so remarkable a degree charac- 
terized her public men. I might illustrate the truth of the position which 
I have laid down by a reference to the history of all free states ancient and 
modern, distinguished for their power and patriotism, and conclusively show, 
not only that there was not one which had not some contrivance, under some 
form, by which the concurring assent of the different portions of the com- 
munity was made necessary in the action of government, but also that the 
virtue, patriotism, and strength of the state were in direct proportion to the 
perfection of the means of securing such assent. 

In estimating the operation of this principle in our system, which depends, 
as I have stated, on the right of interposition on the part of a State, we must 
not omit to take into consideration the amending power, by which new 
powers may be granted, or any derangement of the system corrected, by the 
concurring assent of three-fourths of the States; and thus, in the same degree, 
strengthening the power of repairing any derangement occasioned by the 
eccentric action of a State. In fact, the power of interposition, fairly under- 
stood, may be considered in the light of an appeal against the usurpations 
of the General Government, the joint agent of all the States, to the States 
themselves,— to be decided under the amending power, by the voice of three- 
fourths of the States, as the highest power known under the system. I know 
the difficulty, in our country, of establishing the truth of the principle for 
which I contend, though resting upon the clearest reason, and tested by the 
universal experience of free nations. I know that the governments of the 
several States, which, for the most part, are constructed on the principle of 
the absolute majority, will be cited as an argument against the conclusion 
to which I have arrived; but, in my opinion, the satisfactory answer can be 
given,— that the objects of expenditure which fall within the sphere of a 
State Government are few and inconsiderable, so that be their action ever 
so irregular, it can occasion but little derangement. If, instead of being 
members of this great confederacy, they formed distinct communities, and 
were compelled to raise armies, and incur other expenses necessary to their 
defence, the laws which I have laid down as necessarily controlling the 
action of a State where the will of an absolute and unchecked majority 
prevailed, would speedily disclose themselves in faction, anarchy, and cor- 
ruption. Even as the case is, the operation of the causes to which I have 



132 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

referred is perceptible in some of the larger and more populous members of 
the Union, whose governments have a powerful central action, and which 
already show a strong moneyed tendency, the invariable forerunner of cor- 
ruption and convulsion. 

But, to return to the General Government. We have now sufficient experi- 
ence to ascertain that the tendency to conflict in its action is between the 
southern and other sections. The latter having a decided majority, must 
habitually be possessed of the powers of the Government, both in this and in 
the other House; and, being governed by that instinctive love of power so 
natural to the human breast, they must become the advocates of the power 
of Government, and in the same degree opposed to the limitations; while the 
other and weaker section is as necessarily thrown on the side of the limita- 
tions. One section is the natural guardian of the delegated powers, and the 
other of the reserved; and the struggle on the side of the former will be to 
enlarge the powers, while that on the opposite side will be to restrain them 
within their constitutional limits. The contest will, in fact, be a contest 
between power and liberty, and such I consider the present— a contest in 
which the weaker section, with its peculiar labor, productions, and institu- 
tions, has at stake all that can be dear to freemen. Should we be able to 
maintain in their full vigor our reserved rights, liberty and prosperity will 
be our portion; but if we yield, and permit the stronger interest to concen- 
trate within itself all the powers of the Government, then will our fate be 
more wretched than that of the aborigines whom we have expelled. In this 
great struggle between the delegated and reserved powers, so far from 
repining that my lot, and that of those whom I represent, is cast on the side 
of the latter, I rejoice that such is the fact; for, though we participate in but 
few of the advantages of the Government, we are compensated, and more 
than compensated, in not being so much exposed to its corruptions. Nor do 
I repine that the duty, so difficult to be discharged, of defending the reserved 
powers against apparently such fearful odds, has been assigned to us. To 
discharge it successfully requires the highest qualities, moral and intellectual; 
and should we perform it with a zeal and ability proportioned to its magni- 
tude, instead of mere planters, our section will become distinguished for its 
patriots and statesmen. But, on the other hand, if we prove unworthy of 
the trust— if we yield to the steady encroachments of power, the severest 
calamity and most debasing corruption will overspread the land. Every 
Southern man, true to the interests of his section, and faithful to the duties 
which Providence has allotted him, will be for ever excluded from the honors 
and emoluments of this Government, which will be reserved for those only 
who have qualified themselves, by political prostitution, for admission into 
the Magdalen Asylum. 1 

1 An English institution of refuge and reformation for prostitutes, founded 1766 [Eds.]. 



The Constitution Not a Compact 
Between Sovereign States 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

(For biographical sketch, see p. 54.) 



M 



r. President: The gentleman from South Carolina 
has admonished us to be mindful of the opin- 
ions of those who shall come after us. We must take our chance, Sir, 
as to the light in which posterity will regard us. I do not decline its judg- 
ment, nor withhold myself from its scrutiny. Feeling that I am perform- 
ing my public duty with singleness of heart and to the best of my ability, I 
fearlessly trust myself to the country, now and hereafter, and leave both my 
motives and my character to its decision. 

The gentleman has terminated his speech in a tone of threat and defiance 
towards this bill, even should it become a law of the land, altogether unusual 
in the halls of Congress. But I shall not suffer myself to be excited into 
warmth by his denunciation of the measure which I support. Among the 
feelings which at this moment fill my breast, not the least is that of regret 
at the position in which the gentleman has placed himself. Sir, he does 
himself no justice. The cause which he has espoused finds no basis in the 
Constitution, no succor from public sympathy, no cheering from a patriotic 
community. He has no foothold on which to stand while he might display 
the powers of his acknowledged talents. Every thing beneath his feet is 
hollow and treacherous. He is like a strong man struggling in a morass: 
every effort to extricate himself only sinks him deeper and deeper. And I 
fear the resemblance may be carried still farther; I fear that no friend can 
safely come to his relief, that no one can approach near enough to hold out 
a helping hand, without danger of going down himself, also, into the bottom- 
less depths of this Serbonian bog. 

The United States Senate, February 16, 1833, in reply to Calhoun's resolutions 
and speech. The Works of Daniel Webster, 13th ed. (Boston: Little, Brown and 
Company, 1864), III, pp. 448-505. See also Register of Debates in Congress, 22nd Cong., 
2nd Sess., pp. 553-587. 

133 



134 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

The honorable gentleman has declared, that on the decision of the question 
now in debate may depend the cause of liberty itself. I am of the same 
opinion; but then, Sir, the liberty which I think is staked on the contest is 
not political liberty, in any general and undefined character, but our own 
well-understood and long-enjoyed American liberty. 

Sir, I love Liberty no less ardently than the gentleman himself, in what- 
ever form she may have appeared in the progress of human history. As 
exhibited in the master states of antiquity, as breaking out again from amidst 
the darkness of the Middle Ages, and beaming on the formation of new com- 
munities in modern Europe, she has, always and everywhere, charms for me. 
Yet, Sir, it is our own liberty, guarded by constitutions and secured by union, 
it is that liberty which is our paternal inheritance, it is our established > dear- 
bought, peculiar American liberty, to which I am chiefly devoted, and the 
cause of which I now mean, to the utmost of my power, to maintain and 
defend. 

Mr. President, if I considered the constitutional question now before us as 
doubtful as it is important, and if I supposed that its decision, either in the 
Senate or by the country, was likely to be in any degree influenced by the 
manner in which I might now discuss it, this would be to me a moment of 
deep solicitude. Such a moment has once existed. There has been a time, 
when, rising in this place, on the same question, I felt, I must confess, that 
something for good or evil to the Constitution of the country might depend 
on an effort of mine. But circumstances are changed. Since that day, Sir, the 
public opinion has become awakened to this great question; it has grasped it; 
it has reasoned upon it, as becomes an intelligent and patriotic community, 
and has settled it, or now seems in the progress of settling it, by an authority 
which none can disobey, the authority of the people themselves. 

I shall not, Mr. President, follow the gentleman, step by step, through the 
course of his speech. Much of what he has said he has deemed necessary to 
the just explanation and defence of his own political character and conduct. 
On this I shall offer no comment. Much, too, has consisted of philosophical 
remark upon the general nature of political liberty, and the history of free 
institutions; and upon other topics, so general in their nature as to possess, 
in my opinion, only a remote bearing on the immediate subject of this debate. 

But the gentleman's speech made some days ago, upon introducing his reso- 
lutions, those resolutions themselves, and parts of the speech now just con- 
cluded, may, I presume, be justly regarded as containing the whole South 
Carolina doctrine. That doctrine it is my purpose now to examine, and to 
compare it with the Constitution of the United States. I shall not consent, 
Sir, to make any new constitution, or to establish another form of government. 
I will not undertake to say what a constitution for these United States ought 
to be. That question the people have decided for themselves; and I shall take 



DANIEL WEBSTER 135 

the instrument as they have established it, and shall endeavor to maintain it, 
in its plain sense and meaning, against opinions and notions which, in my 
judgment, threaten its subversion. 

The resolutions introduced by the gentleman were apparently drawn up 
with care, and brought forward upon deliberation. I shall not be in danger, 
therefore, of misunderstanding him, or those who agree with him, if I pro- 
ceed at once to these resolutions, and consider them as an authentic statement 
of those opinions upon the great constitutional question, by which the recent 
proceedings in South Carolina are attempted to be justified. 

These resolutions are three in number. 

The third seems intended to enumerate, and to deny, the several opinions 
expressed in the President's proclamation, respecting the nature and powers 
of this government. Of this third resolution, I purpose, at present, to take no 
particular notice. 

The first two resolutions of the honorable member affirm these propositions, 
viz.: — 

i. That the political system under which we live, and under which Con- 
gress is now assembled, is a compact, to which the people of the several States, 
as separate and sovereign communities are the parties. 

2. That these sovereign parties have a right to judge, each for itself, of any 
alleged violation of the Constitution by Congress; and, in case of such viola- 
tion, to choose, each for itself, its own mode and measure of redress. 

It is true, Sir, that the honorable member calls this a "constitutional" com- 
pact; but still he affirms it to be a compact between sovereign States. What 
precise meaning, then, does he attach to the term constitutional? When 
applied to compacts between sovereign States, the term constitutional affixes 
to the word compact no definite idea. Were we to hear of a constitutional 
league or treaty between England and France, or a constitutional convention 
between Austria and Russia, we should not understand what could be in- 
tended by such a league, such a treaty, or such a convention. In these connec- 
tions, the word is void of all meaning; and yet, Sir, it is easy, quite easy, to see 
why the honorable gentleman has used it in these resolutions. He cannot 
open the book, and look upon our written frame of government, without 
seeing that it is called a constitution. This may well be appalling to him. 
It threatens his whole doctrine of compact, and its darling derivatives, nullifi- 
cation and secession, with instant confutation. Because, if he admits our 
instrument of government to be a constitution, then, for that very reason, it is 
not a compact between sovereigns; a constitution of government and a com- 
pact between sovereign powers being things essentially unlike in their very 
natures, and incapable of ever being the same. Yet the word constitution is 
on the very front of the instrument. He cannot overlook it. He seeks, there- 
fore, to compromise the matter, and to sink all the substantial sense of the 



136 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

word, while he retains a resemblance of its sound. He introduces a new word 
of his own, viz. compact, as importing the principal idea, and designed to play 
the principal part, and degrades constitution into an insignificant, idle epithet, 
attached to compact. The whole then stands as a "constitutional compact"! 
And in this way he hopes to pass off a plausible gloss, as satisfying the words 
of the instrument. But he will find himself disappointed. Sir, I must say to 
the honorable gentleman, that, in our American political grammar, constitu- 
tion is a noun substantive; it imports a distinct and clear idea of itself; and 
it is not to lose its importance and dignity, it is not to be turned into a poor, 
ambiguous, senseless, unmeaning adjective, for the purpose of accommodating 
any new set of political notions. Sir, we reject his new rules of syntax alto- 
gether. We will not give up our forms of political speech to the grammarians 
of the school of nullification. By the Constitution, we mean, not a "constitu- 
tional compact," but, simply and directly, the Constitution, the fundamental 
law; and if there be one word in the language which the people of the 
United States understand, this is that word. We know no more of a constitu- 
tional compact between sovereign powers, than we know of a constitutional 
indenture of copartnership, a constitutional deed of conveyance, or a constitu- 
tional bill of exchange. But we know what the Constitution is; we know what 
the plainly written, fundamental law is; we know what the bond of our 
Union and the security of our liberties is; and we mean to maintain and to 
defend it, in its plain sense and unsophisticated meaning. 

The sense of the gentleman's proposition, therefore, is not at all affected, 
one way or the other, by the use of this word. That proposition still is, that 
our system of government is but a compact between the people of separate 
and sovereign States. 

Was it Mirabeau, Mr. President, or some other master of the human pas- 
sions, who has told us that words are things? They are indeed things, and 
things of mighty influence, not only in addresses to the passions and high- 
wrought feelings of mankind, but in the discussion of legal and political ques- 
tions also; because a just conclusion is often avoided, or a false one reached, 
by the adroit substitution of one phrase, or one word, for another. Of this we 
have, I think, another example in the resolutions before us. 

The first resolution declares that the people of the several States "acceded" 
to the Constitution, or to the constitutional compact, as it is called. This word 
"accede," not found either in the Constitution itself, or in the ratification of it 
by any one of the States, has been chosen for use here, doubtless, not without 
a well-considered purpose. 

The natural converse of accession is secession; and, therefore, when it is 
stated that the people of the States acceded to the Union, it may be more 
plausibly argued that they may secede from it. If, in adopting the Constitu- 
tion, nothing was done but acceding to a compact, nothing would seem neces- 
sary, in order to break it up, but to secede from the same compact. But the 



DANIEL WEBSTER 137 

term is wholly out of place. Accession, as a word applied to political associa- 
tions, implies coming into a league, treaty, or confederacy, by one hitherto a 
stranger to it; and secession implies departing from such league or confederacy. 
The people of the United States have used no such form of expression in 
establishing the present government. They do not say that they accede to a 
league, but they declare that they ordain and establish a Constitution. Such 
are the very words of the instrument itself; and in all the States, without an 
exception, the language used by their conventions was, that they "ratified the 
Constitution"; some of them employing the additional words "assented to" 
and "adopted," but all of them "ratifying." 

There is more importance than may, at first sight, appear, in the introduc- 
tion of this new word by the honorable mover of these resolutions. Its adoption 
and use are indispensable to maintain those premises, from which his main 
conclusion is to be afterwards drawn. But before showing that, allow me to 
remark, that this phraseology tends to keep out of sight the just view of a 
previous political history, as well as to suggest wrong ideas as to what was 
actually done when the present Constitution was agreed to. In 1789, and 
before this Constitution was adopted, the United States had already been in 
a union, more or less close, for fifteen years. At least as far back as the meet- 
ing of the first Congress, in 1774, they had been in some measure, and for 
some national purposes, united together. Before the Confederation of 1781, 
they had declared independence jointly, and had carried on the war jointly, 
both by sea and land; and this not as separate States, but as one people. 
When, therefore, they formed that Confederation, and adopted its articles 
as articles of perpetual union, they did not come together for the first time; 
and therefore they did not speak of the States as acceding to the Confedera- 
tion, although it was a league, and nothing but a league, and rested on noth- 
ing but plighted faith for its performance. Yet, even then, the States were 
not strangers to each other; there was a bond of union already subsisting 
between them; they were associated, united States; and the object of the 
Confederation was to make a stronger and better bond of union. Their repre- 
sentatives deliberated together on these proposed Articles of Confederation, 
and, being authorized by their respective States, finally "ratified and con- 
firmed" them. Inasmuch as they were already in union, they did not speak 
of acceding to the new Articles of Confederation, but of ratifying and con- 
firming them; and this language was not used inadvertently, because, in the 
same instrument, accession is used in its proper sense, when applied to Can- 
ada, which was altogether a stranger to the existing union. "Canada," says 
the eleventh article, "acceding to this Confederation, and joining in the 
measures of the United States, shall be admitted into the Union." 

Having thus used the terms ratify and confirm, even in regard to the old 
Confederation, it would have been strange indeed, if the people of the United 
States, after its formation, and when they came to establish the present 



I38 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

Constitution, had spoken of the States, or the people of the States, as acced- 
ing to this Constitution. Such language would have been ill-suited to the 
occasion. It would have implied an existing separation or disunion among the 
States, such as never has existed since 1774. No such language, therefore, 
was used. The language actually employed is, adopt, ratify , ordain, establish. 

Therefore, Sir, since any State, before she can prove her right to dissolve 
the Union, must show her authority to undo what has been done, no State is 
at liberty to secede, on the ground that she and other States have done noth- 
ing but accede. She must show that she has a right to reverse what has been 
ordained, to unsettle and overthrow what has been established, to reject what 
the people have adopted, and to break up what they have ratified; because 
these are the terms which express the transactions which have actually, taken 
place. In other words, she must show her right to make a revolution. 

If, Mr. President, in drawing these resolutions, the honorable member had 
confined himself to the use of constitutional language, there would have been 
a wide and awful hiatus between his premises and his conclusion. Leaving 
out the two words compact and accession, which are not constitutional modes 
of expression, and stating the matter precisely as the truth is, his first resolu- 
tion would have affirmed that the people of the several States ratified this 
Constitution, or form of government. These are the very words of South 
Carolina herself, in her act of ratification. Let, then, his first resolution tell 
the exact truth; let it state the fact precisely as it exists; let it say that the 
people of the several States ratified a constitution, or form of government; 
and then, Sir, what will become of his inference in his second resolution, 
which is in these words, viz. "that, as in all other cases of compact among 
sovereign parties, each has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of the 
infraction as of the mode and measure of redress"? It is obvious, is it not, Sir? 
that this conclusion requires for its support quite other premises; it requires 
premises which speak of accession and of compact between sovereign powers; 
and, without such premises, it is altogether unmeaning. 

Mr. President, if the honorable member will truly state what the people 
did in forming this Constitution, and then state what they must do if they 
would now undo what they then did, he will unavoidably state a case of 
revolution. Let us see if it be not so. He must state, in the first place, that the 
people of the several States adopted and ratified this Constitution, or form 
of government; and, in the next place, he must state that they have a right to 
undo this; that is to say, that they have a right to discard the form of govern- 
ment which they have adopted, and to break up the Constitution which they 
have ratified. Now, Sir, this is neither more nor less than saying that they 
have a right to make a revolution. To reject an established government, to 
break up a political constitution, is revolution. 

I deny that any man can state accurately what was done by the people, in 



DANIEL WEBSTER 139 

establishing the present Constitution, and then state accurately what the 
people, or any part of them, must now do to get rid of its obligations, without 
stating an undeniable case of the overthrow of government. I admit, of course, 
that the people may, if they choose, overthrow the government. But, then, 
that is revolution. The doctrine now contended for is, that, by nullification 
or secession, the obligations and authority of the government may be set aside 
or rejected, without revolution. But that is what I deny; and what I say is, 
that no man can state the case with historical accuracy, and in constitutional 
language, without showing that the honorable gentleman's right, as asserted in 
his conclusion, is a revolutionary right merely; that it does not and cannot 
exist under the Constitution, or agreeably to the Constitution, but can come 
into existence only when the Constitution is overthrown. This is the reason, 
Sir, which makes it necessary to abandon the use of constitutional language 
for a new vocabulary, and to substitute, in the place of plain historical facts, 
a series of assumptions. This is the reason why it is necessary to give new 
names to things, to speak of the Constitution, not as a constitution, but as a 
compact, and of the ratifications by the people, not as ratifications, but as acts 
of accession. 

Sir, I intend to hold the gentleman to the written record. In the discussion 
of a constitutional question, I intend to impose upon him the restraints of 
constitutional language. The people have ordained a Constitution; can they 
reject it without revolution? They have established a form of government; 
can they overthrow it without revolution? These are the true questions. 

Allow me now, Mr. President, to inquire further into the extent of the 
propositions contained in the resolutions, and their necessary consequences. 

Where sovereign communities are parties, there is no essential difference 
between a compact, a confederation, and a league. They all equally rest on 
the plighted faith of the sovereign party. A league, or confederacy, is but a 
subsisting or continuing treaty. 

The gentleman's resolutions, then, affirm, in effect, that these twenty-four 
United States are held together only by a subsisting treaty, resting for its 
fulfilment and continuance on no inherent power of its own, but on the 
plighted faith of each State; or, in other words, that our Union is but a 
league; and, as a consequence from this proposition, they further affirm that, 
as sovereigns are subject to no superior power, the States must judge, each for 
itself, of any alleged violation of the league; and if such violation be supposed 
to have occurred, each may adopt any mode or measure of redress which it 
shall think proper. 

Other consequences naturally follow, too, from the main proposition. If 
a league between sovereign powers have no limitation as to the time of its 
duration, and contain nothing making it perpetual, it subsists only during the 
good pleasure of the parties, although no violation be complained of. If, in 



I40 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

the opinion of either party, it be violated, such party may say that he will no 
longer fulfil its obligations on his part, but will consider the whole league 
or compact at an end, although it might be one of its stipulations that it 
should be perpetual. Upon this principle, the Congress of the United States, 
in 1798, declared null and void the treaty of alliance between the United 
States and France, though it professed to be a perpetual alliance. 

If the violation of the league be accompanied with serious injuries, the 
suffering party, being sole judge of his own mode and measure of redress, has 
a right to indemnify himself by reprisals on the offending members of the 
league; and reprisals, if the circumstances of the case require it, may be 
followed by direct, avowed, and public war. 

The necessary import of the resolution, therefore, is, that the United States 
are connected only by a league; that it is in the good pleasure of every State 
to decide how long she will choose to remain a member of this league; that 
any State may determine the extent of her own obligations under it, and 
accept or reject what shall be decided by the whole; that she may also deter- 
mine whether her rights have been violated, what is the extent of the injury 
done her, and what mode and measure of redress her wrongs may make it fit 
and expedient for her to adopt. The result of the whole is, that any State may 
secede at pleasure; that any State may resist a law which she herself may 
choose to say exceeds the power of Congress; and that, as a sovereign power, 
she may redress her own grievances, by her own arm, at her own discretion. 
She may make reprisals; she may cruise against the property of other members 
of the league; she may authorize captures, and make open war. 

If, Sir, this be our political condition, it is time the people of the United 
States understood it. Let us look for a moment to the practical consequences 
of these opinions. One State, holding an embargo law unconstitutional, may 
declare her opinion, and withdraw from the Union. She secedes. Another, 
forming and expressing the same judgment on a law laying duties on imports, 
may withdraw also. She secedes. And as, in her opinion, money has been 
taken out of the pockets of her citizens illegally, under pretence of this law, 
and as she has power to redress their wrongs, she may demand satisfaction; 
and, if refused, she may take it with a strong hand. The gentleman has him- 
self pronounced the collection of duties, under existing laws, to be nothing 
but robbery. Robbers, of course, may be rightfully dispossessed of the fruits 
of their flagitious crimes; and, therefore, reprisals, impositions on the com- 
merce of other States, foreign alliances against them, or open war, are all 
modes of redress justly open to the discretion and choice of South Carolina; 
for she is to judge of her own rights, and to seek satisfaction for her own 
wrongs, in her own way. 

But, Sir, a third State is of opinion, not only that these laws of imposts are 
constitutional, but that it is the absolute duty of Congress to pass and to 



DANIEL WEBSTER 1 4 J 

maintain such laws; and that, by omitting to pass and maintain them, its 
constitutional obligations would be grossly disregarded. She herself relin- 
quished the power of protection, she might allege, and allege truly, and gave 
it up to Congress, on the faith that Congress would exercise it. If Congress 
now refuse to exercise it, Congress does, as she may insist, break the condi- 
tion of the grant, and thus manifestly violate the Constitution; and for this 
violation of the Constitution, she may threaten to secede also. Virginia may 
secede, and hold the fortresses in the Chesapeake. The Western States may 
secede, and take to their own use the public lands. Louisiana may secede, if 
she choose, form a foreign alliance, and hold the mouth of the Mississippi. 
If one State may secede, ten may do so, twenty may do so, twenty-three may 
do so. Sir, as these secessions go on, one after another, what is to constitute 
the United States? Whose will be the army? Whose the navy? Who will pay 
the debts? Who fulfill the public treaties? Who perform the constitutional 
guaranties? Who govern this District and the Territories? Who retain the 
public property? 

Mr. President, every man must see that these are all questions which can 
arise only after a revolution. They presuppose the breaking up of the govern- 
ment. While the Constitution lasts, they are repressed; they spring up to 
annoy and startle us only from its grave. 

The Constitution does not provide for events which must be preceded by 
its own destruction, secession, therefore, since it must bring these conse- 
quences with it, is revolutionary, and nullification is equally revolu- 
tionary. What is revolution? Why, Sir, that is revolution which overturns, 
or controls, or successfully resists, the existing public authority; that which 
arrests the exercise of the supreme power; that which introduces a new para- 
mount authority into the rule of the State. Now, Sir, this is the precise object 
of nullification. It attempts to supersede the supreme legislative authority. 
It arrests the arm of the executive magistrate. It interrupts the exercise of the 
accustomed judicial power. Under the name of an ordinance, it declares null 
and void, within the State, all the revenue laws of the United States. Is not 
this revolutionary? Sir, so soon as this ordinance shall be carried into effect, 
a revolution will have commenced in South Carolina. She will have thrown 
off the authority to which her citizens have heretofore been subject. She will 
have declared her own opinions and her own will to be above the laws and 
above the power of those who are intrusted with their administration. If she 
makes good these declarations, she is revolutionized. As to her, it is as dis- 
tinctly a change of the supreme power as the American Revolution of 1776. 
That revolution did not subvert government in all its forms. It did not sub- 
vert local laws and municipal administrations. It only threw off the dominion 
of a power claiming to be superior, and to have a right, in many important 
respects, to exercise legislative authority. Thinking this authority to have 



I42 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

been usurped or abused, the American Colonies, now the United States, bade 
it defiance, and freed themselves from it by means of a revolution. But that 
revolution left them with their own municipal laws still, and the forms of local 
government. If Carolina now shall effectually resist the laws of Congress; if 
she shall be her own judge, take her remedy into her own hands, obey the 
laws of the Union when she pleases and disobey them when she pleases, she 
will relieve herself from a paramount power as distinctly as the American 
Colonies did the same thing in 1776. In other words, she will achieve, as to 
herself, a revolution. 

But, Sir, while practical nullification in South Carolina would be, as to 
herself, actual and distinct revolution, its necessary tendency must also be to 
spread revolution, and to break up the Constitution, as to all the other States. 
It strikes a deadly blow at the vital principle of the whole Union. To allow 
State resistance to the laws of Congress to be rightful and proper, to admit 
nullification in some States, and yet not expect to see a dismemberment of 
the entire government, appears to me the wildest illusion, and the most 
extravagant folly. The gentleman seems not conscious of the direction or the 
rapidity of his own course. The current of his opinions sweeps him along, he 
knows not whither. To begin with nullification, with the avowed intent, 
nevertheless, not to proceed to secession, dismemberment, and general revolu- 
tion, is as if one were to take the plunge of Niagara, and cry out that he 
would stop half way down. In the one case, as in the other, the rash adven- 
turer must go to the bottom of the dark abyss below, were it not that that 
abyss has no discovered bottom. 

Nullification, if successful, arrests the power of the law, absolves citizens 
from their duty, subverts the foundation both of protection and obedience, 
dispenses with oaths and obligations of allegiance, and elevates another 
authority to supreme command. Is not this revolution? And it raises to supreme 
command four-and-twenty distinct powers, each professing to be under a 
general government, and yet each setting its laws at defiance at pleasure. Is 
not this anarchy, as well as revolution? Sir, the Constitution of the United 
States was received as a whole, and for the whole country. If it cannot stand 
altogether, it cannot stand in parts; and if the laws cannot be executed every- 
where, they cannot long be executed anywhere. The gentleman very well 
knows that all duties and imposts must be uniform throughout the country. 
He knows that we cannot have one rule or one law for South Carolina, and 
another for other States. He must see, therefore, and does see, and every man 
sees, that the only alternative is a repeal of the laws throughout the whole 
Union, or their execution in Carolina as well as elsewhere. And this repeal 
is demanded because a single State interposes her veto, and threatens resist- 
ance! The result of the gentleman's opinion, or rather the very text of his 
doctrine, is, that no act of Congress can bind all the States, the constitution- 



DANIEL WEBSTER 1 43 

ality of which is not admitted by all; or, in other words, that no single State 
is bound, against its own dissent, by a law of imposts. This is precisely the 
evil experienced under the old Confederation, and for remedy of which this 
Constitution was adopted. The leading object in establishing this government, 
an object forced on the country by the condition of the times and the absolute 
necessity of the law, was to give to Congress power to lay and collect imposts 
without the consent of 'particular States. The Revolutionary debt remained 
unpaid; the national treasury was bankrupt; the country was destitute of 
credit; Congress issued its requisitions on the States, and the States neglected 
them; there was no power of coercion but war; Congress could not lay im- 
posts, or other taxes, by its own authority; the whole general government, 
therefore, was little more than a name. The Articles of Confederation, as to 
purposes of revenue and finance, were nearly a dead letter. The country 
sought to escape from this condition, at once feeble and disgraceful, by 
constituting a government which should have power, of itself, to lay duties 
and taxes, and to pay the public debt, and provide for the general welfare; 
and to lay these duties and taxes in all the States, without asking the consent 
of the State governments. This was the very power on which the new Consti- 
tution was to depend for all its ability to do good; and without it, it can be no 
government, now or at any time. Yet, Sir, it is precisely against this power, 
so absolutely indispensable to the very being of the government, that South 
Carolina directs her ordinance. She attacks the government in its authority 
to raise revenue, the very mainspring of the whole system; and if she succeed, 
every movement of that system must inevitably cease. It is of no avail that 
she declares that she does not resist the law as a revenue law, but as a law 
for protecting manufactures. It is a revenue law; it is the very law by force 
of which the revenue is collected; if it be arrested in any State, the revenue 
ceases in that State; it is, in a word, the sole reliance of the government for 
the means of maintaining itself and performing its duties. 

Mr. President, the alleged right of a State to decide constitutional questions 
for herself necessarily leads to force, because other States must have the 
same right, and because different States will decide differently; and when 
these questions arise between States, if there be no superior power, they can 
be decided only by the law of force. On entering into the Union, the people 
of each State gave up a part of their own power to make laws for themselves, 
in consideration that, as to common objects, they should have a part in mak- 
ing laws for other States. In other words, the people of all the States agreed 
to create a common government, to be conducted by common counsels. 
Pennsylvania, for example, yielded the right of laying imposts in her own 
ports, in consideration that the new government, in which she was to have a 
share, should possess the power of laying imposts on all the States. If South 
Carolina now refuses to submit to this power, she breaks the condition on 



144 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

which other States entered into the Union. She partakes of the common coun- 
sels, and therein assists to bind others, while she refuses to be bound herself. 
It makes no difference in the case, whether she does all this without reason 
or pretext, or whether she sets up as a reason, that, in her judgment, the acts 
complained of are unconstitutional. In the judgment of other States, they are 
not so. It is nothing to them that she offers some reason or some apology for 
her conduct, if it be one which they do not admit. It is not to be expected 
that any State will violate her duty without some plausible pretext. That 
would be too rash a defiance of the opinion of mankind. But if it be a pretext 
which lies in her own breast; if it be no more than an opinion which she says 
she has formed, how can other States be satisfied with this? How can they 
allow her to be judge of her own obligations? Or, if she may judge of her 
obligations, may they not judge of their rights also? May not the twenty-three 
entertain an opinion as well as the twenty-fourth? And if it be their right, in 
their own opinion, as expressed in the common council, to enforce the law 
against her, how is she to say that her right and her opinion are to be every 
thing, and their right and their opinion nothing? 

Mr. President, if we are to receive the Constitution as the text, and then 
to lay down in its margin the contradictory commentaries which have been, 
and which may be, made by different States, the whole page would be a 
polyglot indeed. It would speak with as many tongues as the builders of 
Babel, and in dialects as much confused, and mutually as unintelligible. The 
very instance now before us presents a practical illustration. The law of the 
last session is declared unconstitutional in South Carolina, and obedience to 
it is refused. In other States, it is admitted to be strictly constitutional. You 
walk over the limit of its authority, therefore, when you pass a State line. 
On one side it is law, on the other side a nullity; and yet it is passed by a 
common government, having the same authority in all the States. 

Such, Sir, are the inevitable results of this doctrine. Beginning with the 
original error, that the Constitution of the United States is nothing but a 
compact between sovereign States; asserting, in the next step, that each State 
has a right to be its own sole judge of the extent of its own obligations, and 
consequently of the constitutionality of laws of Congress; and, in the next, 
that it may oppose whatever it sees fit to declare unconstitutional, and that it 
decides for itself on the mode and measure of redress,— the argument arrives 
at once at the conclusion, that what a State dissents from, it may nullify; 
what it opposes, it may oppose by force; what it decides for itself, it may 
execute by its own power; and that, in short, it is itself supreme over the legis- 
lation of Congress, and supreme over the decisions of the national judicature; 
supreme over the constitution of the country, supreme over the supreme law 
of the land. However it seeks to protect itself against these plain inferences, 
by saying that an unconstitutional law is no law, and that it only opposes 



DANIEL WEBSTER 145 

such laws as are unconstitutional, yet this does not in the slightest degree 
vary the result; since it insists on deciding this question for itself; and, in 
opposition to reason and argument, in opposition to practice and experience, 
in opposition to the judgment of others, having an equal right to judge, it 
says, only, "Such is my opinion, and my opinion shall be my law, and I will 
support it by my own strong hand. I denounce the law; I declare it unconsti- 
tutional; that is enough; it shall not be executed. Men in arms are ready to 
resist its execution. An attempt to enforce it shall cover the land with blood. 
Elsewhere it may be binding; but here it is trampled under foot." 
This, Sir, is practical nullification. 

And now, Sir, against all these theories and opinions, I maintain,— 
i. That the Constitution of the United States is not a league, confederacy, 
or compact between the people of the several States in their sovereign capaci- 
ties; but a government proper, founded on the adoption of the people, and 
creating direct relations between itself and individuals. 

2. That no State authority has power to dissolve these relations; that noth- 
ing can dissolve them but revolution; and that, consequently, there can be no 
such thing as secession without revolution. 

3. That there is a supreme law, consisting of the Constitution of the 
United States, and acts of Congress passed in pursuance of it, and treaties; 
and that, in cases not capable of assuming the character of a suit in law or 
equity, Congress must judge of, and finally interpret, this supreme law so 
often as it has occasion to pass acts of legislation; and in cases capable of 
assuming, and actually assuming, the character of a suit, the Supreme Court 
of the United States is the final interpreter. 

4. That an attempt by a State to abrogate, annul, or nullify an act of 
Congress, or to arrest its operation within her limits, on the ground that, in 
her opinion, such law is unconstitutional, is a direct usurpation on the just 
powers of the general government, and on the equal rights of other States; 
a plain violation of the Constitution, and a proceeding essentially revolution- 
ary in its character and tendency. 

[Webster enters into an extended legal interpretation of the four propositions, 
in the course of which he offers direct refutation of Calhoun's theories of 
concurrent majorities.] 



Sir, those who espouse the doctrines of nullification reject, as it seems to 
me, the first great principle of all republican liberty; that is, that the majority 
must govern. In matters of common concern, the judgment of a majority must 
stand as the judgment of the whole. This is a law imposed on us by the abso- 
lute necessity of the case; and if we do not act upon it, there is no possibility 
of maintaining any government but despotism. We hear loud and repeated 



146 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

denunciations against what is called majority government. It is declared, with 
much warmth, that a majority government cannot be maintained in the 
United States. What, then, do gentlemen wish? Do they wish to establish a 
minority government? Do they wish to subject the will of the many to the 
will of the few? The honorable gentleman from South Carolina has spoken 
of absolute majorities and majorities concurrent; language wholly unknown 
to our Constitution, and to which it is not easy to affix definite ideas. As 
far as I understand it, it would teach us that the absolute majority may be 
found in Congress, but the majority concurrent must be looked for in the 
States; that is to say, Sir, stripping the matter of this novelty of phrase, that 
the dissent of one or more States, as States, renders void the decision of a 
majority of Congress, so far as that State is concerned. And so this doctrine, 
running but a short career, like other dogmas of the day, terminates in 
nullification. 

If this vehement invective against majorities meant no more than that, in 
the construction of government, it is wise to provide checks and balances, 
so that there should be various limitations on the power of the mere majority, 
it would only mean what the Constitution of the United States has already 
abundantly provided. It is full of such checks and balances. In its very 
organization, it adopts a broad and most effective principle in restraint of the 
power of mere majorities. A majority of the people elects the House of Repre- 
sentatives, but it does not elect the Senate. The Senate is elected by the 
States, each State having, in this respect, an equal power. No law, therefore, 
can pass, without the assent of the representatives of the people, and a 
majority of the representatives of the States also. A majority of the representa- 
tives of the people must concur, and a majority of the States must concur, in 
every act of Congress; and the President is elected on a plan compounded of 
both these principles. But having composed one house of representatives 
chosen by the people in each State, according to their numbers, and the other 
of an equal number of members from every State, whether larger or smaller, 
the Constitution gives to majorities in these houses thus constituted the full 
and entire power of passing laws, subject always to the constitutional restric- 
tions and to the approval of the President. To subject them to any other 
power is clear usurpation. The majority of one house may be controlled by 
the majority of the other; and both may be restrained by the President's 
negative. These are checks and balances provided by the Constitution, exist- 
ing in the government itself, and wisely intended to secure deliberation and 
caution in legislative proceedings. But to resist the will of the majority in 
both houses, thus constitutionally exercised; to insist on the lawfulness of 
interposition by an extraneous power; to claim the right of defeating the will 
of Congress, by setting up against it the will of a single State,— is neither 
more nor less, as its strikes me, than a plain attempt to overthrow the govern- 
ment. The constituted authorities of the United States are no longer a govern- 



DANIEL WEBSTER 147 

ment, if they be not masters of their own will; they are no longer a government, 
if an external power may arrest their proceedings; they are no longer 
a government, if acts passed by both houses, and approved by the President, 
may be nullified by State vetoes or State ordinances. Does any one suppose 
it could make any difference, as to the binding authority of an act of Con- 
gress, and of the duty of a State to respect it, whether it passed by a mere 
majority of both houses, or by three fourths of each, or the unanimous vote 
of each? Within the limits and restrictions of the Constitution, the govern- 
ment of the United States, like all other popular governments, acts by majori- 
ties. It can act no otherwise. Whoever, therefore, denounces the government 
of majorities, denounces the government of his own country, and denounces 
all free governments. And whoever would restrain these majorities, while 
acting within their constitutional limits, by an external power, whatever he 
may intend, asserts principles which, if adopted, can lead to nothing else 
than the destruction of the government itself. 

Does not the gentleman perceive, Sir, how his argument against majorities 
might here be retorted upon him? Does he not see how cogently he might be 
asked, whether it be the character of nullification to practise what it preaches? 
Look to South Carolina, at the present moment. How far are the rights of 
minorities there respected? I confess, Sir, I have not known, in peaceable 
times, the power of the majority carried with a higher hand, or upheld with 
more relentless disregard of the rights, feelings, and principles of the minor- 
ity;— a minority embracing, as the gentleman himself will admit, a large 
portion of the worth and respectability of the State; a minority comprehending 
in its numbers men who have been associated with him, and with us, in these 
halls of legislation; men who have served their country at home and honored 
it abroad; men who would cheerfully lay down their lives for their native 
State, in any cause which they could regard as the cause of honor and duty; 
men above fear, and above reproach; whose deepest grief and distress spring 
from the conviction, that the present proceedings of the State must ultimately 
reflect discredit upon her. How is this minority, how are these men, regarded? 
They are enthralled and disfranchised by ordinances and acts of legislation; 
subjected to tests and oaths, incompatible, as they conscientiously think, 
with oaths already taken, and obligations already assumed, they are proscribed 
and denounced, as recreants to duty and patriotism, and slaves to a foreign 
power. Both the spirit which pursues them, and the positive measures which 
emanate from that spirit, are harsh and proscriptive beyond all precedent 
within my knowledge, except in periods of professed revolution. 

It is not, Sir, one would think, for those who approve these proceedings 
to complain of the power of majorities. 

Mr. President, all popular governments rest on two principles, or two 
assumptions:— 

First, That there is so far a common interest among those over whom the 



I48 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE CONSTITUTION 

government extends, as that it may provide for the defence, protection, and 
good government of the whole, without injustice or oppression to parts; and 

Secondly, That the representatives of the people, and especially the people 
themselves, are secure against general corruption, and may be trusted, there- 
fore, with the exercise of power. 

Whoever argues against these principles argues against the practicability 
of all free governments. And whoever admits these, must admit, or cannot 
deny, that power is as safe in the hands of Congress as in those of other 
representative bodies. Congress is not irresponsible. Its members are agents 
of the people, elected by them, answerable to them, and liable to be displaced 
or superseded, at their pleasure; and they possess as fair a claim to the confi- 
dence of the people, while they continue to deserve it, as any other public 
political agents. 

If, then, Sir, the manifest intention of the Convention, and the contem- 
porary admission of both friends and foes, prove any thing; if the plain text 
of the instrument itself, as well as the necessary implication from other 
provisions, prove any thing; if the early legislation of Congress, the course of 
judicial decisions, acquiesced in by all the States for forty years, prove any 
thing,— then it is proved that there is a supreme law, and a final interpreter. 



Mr. President, if the friends of nullification should be able to propagate 
their opinions, and give them practical effect, they would, in my judgment, 
prove themselves the most skillful "architects of ruin," the most effectual 
extinguishers of high-raised expectation, the greatest blasters of human hopes, 
that any age has produced. They would stand up to proclaim, in tones which 
would pierce the ears of half the human race, that the last great experiment 
of representative government had failed. They would send forth sounds, at 
the hearing of which the doctrine of the divine right of kings would feel, 
even in its grave, a returning sensation of vitality and resuscitation. Millions 
of eyes, of those who now feed their inherent love of liberty on the success of 
the American example, would turn away from beholding our dismemberment, 
and find no place on earth whereon to rest their gratified sight. Amidst the 
incantations and orgies of nullification, secession, disunion, and revolution 
would be celebrated the funeral rites of constitutional and republican liberty. 

But, Sir, if the government do its duty, if it act with firmness and with 
moderation, these opinions cannot prevail. Be assured, Sir, be assured, that, 
among the political sentiments of this people, the love of union is still upper- 
most. They will stand fast by the Constitution, and by those who defend it. 
I rely on no temporary expedients, on no political combination; but I rely on 
the true American feeling, the genuine patriotism of the people, and the 
imperative decision of the public voice. Disorder and confusion, indeed, may 



DANIEL WEBSTER 1 49 

arise; scenes of commotion and contest are threatened, and perhaps may 
come. With my whole heart, I pray for the continuance of the domestic 
peace and quiet of the country. I desire, most ardently, the restoration of 
affection and harmony to all its parts. I desire that every citizen of the whole 
country may look to this government with no other sentiments than those of 
grateful respect and attachment. But I cannot yield even to kind feelings the 
cause of the Constitution, the true glory of the country, and the great trust 
which we hold in our hands for succeeding ages. If the Constitution cannot 
be maintained without meeting these scenes of commotion and contest, how- 
ever unwelcome, they must come. We cannot, we must not, we dare not, omit 
to do that which, in our judgment, the safety of the Union requires. Not 
regardless of consequences, we must yet meet consequences; seeing the 
hazards which surround the discharge of public duty, it must yet be dis- 
charged. For myself, Sir, I shun no responsibility justly devolving on me, 
here or elsewhere, in attempting to maintain the cause. I am bound to it by 
indissoluble ties of affection and duty, and I shall cheerfully partake in its 
fortunes and its fate. I am ready to perform my own appropriate part, when- 
ever and wherever the occasion may call on me, and to take my chance 
among those upon whom blows may fall first and fall thickest. I shall exert 
every faculty I possess in aiding to prevent the Constitution from being nulli- 
fied, destroyed, or impaired; and even should I see it fall, I will still, with a 
voice feeble, perhaps, but earnest as ever issued from human lips, and with 
fidelity and zeal which nothing shall extinguish, call on the people to come 
to its rescue. 



A HOUSE DIVIDED 



The slavery controversy in America was muted until 
the fourth decade of the nineteenth century. On ]anuary 
i, 1 83 1, William Lloyd Garrison issued a strident chal- 
lenge in his Liberator: 

1 will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as 
justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or write 
with moderation. ... I am in earnest— 1 will not equivocate 
—1 will not excuse— I will not retreat a single inch— and i 

WILL BE HEARD. 

Proslavery apologists have contended that Garrison and 
other abolitionists were primarily if not exclusively re- 
sponsible for creating a solid South on the slavery issue. 
This is part of the mythology of the controversy. For 
two decades before Garrisons outburst, the dark shadow 
of slavery insinuated itself into speeches on major public 
questions given by such statesmen as John Randolph, 
William Pinkney, and Robert Wayne. By 1830, the South 
had acquired the psychology of an aggressively defensive, 
self-conscious minority group. 

Two cultures were coming into conflict. The North 
became increasingly pluralistic and democratic; it experi- 
mented with movements that fostered ideals of humani- 
tarianism, liberalism, and perfectionism. Conversely, the 
South fashioned its ideals of a static society upon a cotton 
culture and a slave-labor system. George Washington, 

150 



A HOUSE DIVIDED 



151 



Thomas Jefferson, and George Mason—representatives of 
Southern leaders who had been nurtured in the Age of 
Enlightenment— had looked upon slavery as morally 
wrong and necessarily evanescent. Theirs was a vanish- 
ing sprit. When Governor Miller of South Carolina, in 
a speech to the legislature in 1820, pronounced slavery 
to he "a positive good," he simply made explicit a view 
that already commanded widespread assent. Indeed, the 
South's instantaneous and volatile reaction to abolitionist 
propaganda betrayed their defensive posture. What aboli- 
tionist propaganda did do was to intensify Southern feel- 
ings and provoke a massive counterattack. 

Southerners knew they were sitting on top of a com- 
bustible society, despite their tableaus of contented 
negroes. Slave insurrections were few, but they were 
gruesome. Rumors of new outbreaks were always afloat. 
Apprehension and fear mounted as abolitionists showered 
inflammatory words on the Southland. State legislatures 
responded by enacting restrictive slave codes. Gangs forci- 
bly entered United States Post Offices and seized aboli- 
tionist tracts. Emancipation societies and individual 
abolitionists were hounded out of the region. Liberally 
minded Southerners were forced to conform to the pro- 
slave line through laws, personal intimidation, and mob 
violence. The repression of civil liberties ended self- 
criticism and social experimentation. 

At the national level influential Southerners encour- 
aged conservatives in the North to quash abolitionism for 
the sake of the Union. Southern congressmen demanded 
"gag rules" that had the effect of tabling all petitions sent 
by abolitionists to the Congress. New territorial outlets 
and guarantees were sought for slavery. Finally the South 
seceded from the Union, convinced that their slave-based 
culture was doomed within it. 

Under attack, Southerners took stock of their regional 
culture in relation to the rest of the nation. As they 



152 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

looked upon a turbulent North, they took to glorifying 
their settled way of life. What emerged was a creed of 
self-justification for both home consumption and export 
purposes. The main article was a prescriptive doctrine 
that slavery is a positive good. This doctrine furnished 
the materials for countless editorials, books, pamphlets, 
sermons, and speeches. Robert Toombs was but one in a 
galaxy of orators who took up the cause. 

Toombs was a full-bodied orator, urbane and witty. 
He was a lawyer by profession, a wealthy Georgia planta- 
tion owner, a national political figure, and a spokesman of 
consequence. For most of his political life he was a mod- 
erate and a Whig. His interests were nation-wide, but as 
the storms of sectionalism mounted in fury, he trimmed 
his sails to prevailing winds from the South. 

Like other apologists for slavery, Toombs had to dis- 
pose of the "self-evident" truths of ]effersons Natural 
Rights philosophy. In one way or another these advocates 
of the new doctrine effaced bothersome words such as 
liberty and equality— flatly denying their universality, 
dismissing them as mere abstractions, or emasculating 
them through logic chopping. The ground cleared, their 
argument boldly extolled inequality, invoking the Bible, 
history, sociology, science, and common observation. The 
argument unfolded in a panoply of claims: Slavery en- 
nobles the barbarian; it is the foundation for true democ- 
racy in the classical sense; it is the condition for social 
stability and progressive civilization. 

On January 7, 1861, Toombs made his farewell speech 
to the Senate of the United States. He held in substance 
that property in slaves must be protected under constitu- 
tional guarantees by all appropriate agencies of the gov- 
ernment as the condition for restoring the Union. Thus 
Toombs laid bare, if ever there were doubts on the score, 
a major premise that had guided the South through 
three decades of labyrinthine argument. 



A HOUSE DIVIDED 153 

It was precisely this idea of property in mankind, sanc- 
tioned by the Constitution, that revolted abolitionists. 
Not all of one temper or mind on tactics and timing, they 
were deeply convinced that slavery was the monstrous 
immorality of the age. "The conviction that slavery is a 
sin," cried Wendell Phillips, their finest orator, "is the 
Gibraltar of our cause." While essentially theological in 
their thinking, they drew their secidar philosophy from 
the Declaration of Independence. Hence slavery was a 
crime against God, nature, and political creed. Abolition- 
ists were under a moral imperative to cleanse the Ameri- 
can conscience; for this they submitted to heckling and 
stoning, and even risked their lives. 

Although abolitionists were loosely banded together 
into the American Anti-Slavery Society, squabbles among 
factions seriously impaired the effectiveness of the organi- 
zation. They worked most successfully through local socie- 
ties. The Garrison wing was totally uncompromising on 
the moral issue. Garrison demanded immediate emanci- 
pation. Nothing must stand in the way, not even the 
Union. He invoked a higher law than the Constitution 
of the United States. He denounced the Constitution as 
"a covenant with death and an agreement with hell," and 
he flamboyantly enforced his anathema by publicly burn- 
ing a copy. 

More practical-minded abolitionists modified Garrisons 
doctrine of immediatism and preached "immediate aboli- 
tion, gradually accomplished." The goal was not to be 
compromised, but their methods were to take account of 
possibilities and consequences. Whereas Garrison believed 
single-mindedly in ideas as weapons with which to assault 
the hardened conscience, practical-minded crusaders ex- 
ploited political opportunities to advance their cause. 
They sent petitions to Congress, and when their petitions 
came under the gag rules, they won converts from among 
those who were outraged by this violation of a citizens 



154 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

constitutional right to petition Congress. When the South 
moved to open new and old territories to slavery, they 
made common cause with free-soilers, first in splinter 
parties, then in the Repuhlican party. In the final analy- 
sis, abolitionism succeeded to the extent that it linked 
moral sentiment to political action. 

But to the public at large, particularly in the South, 
Garrisonism and abolitionism were interchangeable terms. 
There were plenty of people who regarded Garrison as a 
hair-shirted monomaniac who deserved manhandling. 
Thougjh, he had fanatical followers, he was also a stormy 
petrel within the ranks of abolitionists. Withal, his voice 
and pen were mighty instruments in stirring moral frenzy. 
Like a Hebrew prophet he showered maledictions upon 
the land, and left troubled consciences in his wake. "For 
one, 1 cannot say 1 ever positively enjoyed one of his 
speeches," observed Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "or 
that I ever failed to listen with a sense of deference or 
moral leadership." 

Out in Illinois a lawyer-politician brooded on what he 
heard and read. Abraham Lincoln knew in his bones that 
slavery was immoral and that sometime, somehow, it must 
end. But he didn't know how. He did know that the 
Union must be preserved, and so he bit his lips and kept 
quiet when, in 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. 
Four years later he broke his silence when the Congress 
repealed the Missouri Compromise, foreshadowing the 
extension of slavery into the Kansas-Nebraska territory. 
In 1854 Lincoln ran for the United States Senate on the 
single proposition that slavery must be contained within 
areas where it already existed. He lost the election, but in 
1858 he was nominated for the Senate by the infant 
Republican party. This time h& ran against Stephen A. 
Douglas, an influential Democrat and accomplished ora- 
tor. Their contest turned out to be the most celebrated 
senatorial campaign in our history. 



A HOUSE DIVIDED 155 

The hackground of the campaign kept intruding itself 
into the foreground. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 
excluded slavery from this domain. The Missouri Com- 
promise of 1820 prohibited it in the Louisiana Territory 
north of the parallel of 36 degrees, 30 minutes. There 
things stood until over $00,000 square miles of Mexican 
territory were added in 1848 by the Treaty of Guadalupe 
Hidalgo. The South, no longer in a mood to accept either 
exclusion or containment of slavery, challenged the 
Federal Government's authority to legislate on the matter 
in newly acquired lands. Eager to save the Union, elder 
statesmen such as Clay and Webster engineered the 
Compromise of 1850. Why insist upon legislative exclu- 
sion, they asked, when climate and geography will render 
slavery uneconomical anyway? Having jettisoned the 
principle of legislative exclusion, southern politicians 
soon moved to repeal the Missouri Compromise itself. 
They succeeded in 1854 when, after angry debate, Con- 
gress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Stephen A. 
Douglas, Chairman of the Senates Committee on Terri- 
tories, was the central figure in the drama. 

The Kansas-Nebraska Act called for the organization 
of two territories, and following Douglas' theory of popu- 
lar sovereignty, left it up to the residents of the territories 
to admit or exclude slavery. The Act also repealed the 
Missouri Compromise. Douglas figured it would raise a 
"hell of a storm," but he thought it would blow over. It 
didn't. It shattered the Democratic party in the North 
and smashed the Whig party, which was replaced by the 
Republican party founded on the free-soil principle. Event 
followed event. Slaveholders and free-soilers locked in a 
bloody struggle for control of Kansas. The Supreme 
Court, in pronouncing on the Dred Scott case in 1857, 
declared that the Missouri Compromise had always been 
unconstitutional. The effect of the decision was to de- 
prive Congress of power to exclude slavery in the terri- 



I56 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

tones. By implication it also deprived territorial legisla- 
tures of this power since they existed hy congressional 
authorization. 

As Lincoln reasoned, Douglas popular sovereignty was 
a palpable fraud. It would not surprise him, Lincoln 
stated, if in some future decision the Supreme Court 
denied to states the right to exclude slavery. That would 
do it. Then slavery would he national and perpetual. On 
]une 16, 1858, when he accepted the Republican nomi- 
nation for the Senate, Lincoln outlined "the plot" by 
which friends of slavery hoped to make it national. 
Clearly, a showdown was at hand. The nation will be- 
come all one thing or the other. It must choose, for "A 
house divided against itself cannot stand." 

In Washington Douglas studied Lincoln's speech, then 
returned to Illinois to open his campaign. On July 9 
Douglas addressed a huge public audience in Chicago. 
He spoke to vindicate his doctrine of popular sovereignty 
and his Senatorial record. He charged that Lincoln's 
"house divided" doctrine would impose uniformity upon 
the states, subvert the Constitution, and provoke fratri- 
cidal war. Lincoln heard Douglas that night and answered 
him the next. The campaign was on. Down state they 
went, both speaking in Springfield on July 17. Between 
August 21 and October 15 they debated jointly at Ottawa, 
Freeport, Jonesboro, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, and 
Alton. Between times and after the joint debates each 
cross-hatched the state independently. 

They were an ill-assorted pair— the tall, lanky Lincoln 
pitted against the stubby Little Giant. Each had taken 
the other's measure many times before. They were 
friendly rivals, not mortal enemies. They pommeled each 
other with argument and riposte; they jockeyed for audi- 
ence favor. But they were deadly serious about the prize 
and the issues. Both wanted to preserve the Union. Both 
regarded slavery as a disruptive factor in national life and 



A HOUSE DIVIDED 157 

a threat to the Union. Douglas contended that the only 
way to preserve the Union was to make slavery a matter 
of local option and to stop agitating the question at the 
national level, as Lincoln and the Republicans were do- 
ing. Lincoln insisted that slavery was incongruent with 
the principles of a free society. The public mind will not 
remain at rest, he argued, until slavery is placed in the 
course of its ultimate extinction. 

The practical question on which Lincoln and Douglas 
differed was, how should slavery be dealt with in the 
territories? But before the campaign was over, the speak- 
ers had plumbed fundamental questions of political life— 
the nature of the Union, democracy, human rights, public 
morality, and personal ambition. As Sandburg put it, 
they gave the nation a book. 

Although Lincoln won the popular vote, he lost the 
election because of an obsolete system of apportionment. 
But the 1858 campaign "forged the link in a chain of 
events" that lifted Lincoln to the Presidency, where he 
presided over the Civil War and the destruction of slav- 
ery. "I have been only an instrument," said Lincoln the 
President. "The logic and moral power of Garrison and 
the anti-slavery people of the country and the army have 
done all." 



Slavery in the United States; Its 
Consistency with Republican Institutions, 
and Its Effect upon the Slave and Society 



ROBERT TOOMBS 



Born, near Washington, Georgia, July 2, 1810; died, 
Washington, Georgia, December 15, 1885. Graduated 
from Union College (New York), 1828; attended Univer- 
sity of Virginia Law School; admitted to Georgia bar, 
1830. Member of Georgia legislature, 1838, 1840-1841, 
1 843- 1 844; of United States House of Representatives, 
1845-1853; of United States Senate, 1853-1861. A 
stanch Whig and Unionist until the middle of the 
1850's. Served briefly as Secretary of State in Jefferson 
Davis' cabinet, then became an officer in the Confederate 
army. Was in exile for two years after the war, then re- 
turned to Georgia. 



Public opinion has always been a recognised element 
in directing the affairs of the world, and many causes 
have combined in our day to increase its strength and power. The more gen- 
eral diffusion of education, the increased facilities of personal intercourse, 
the rapidity with which ideas and intelligence may be transmitted, and a 
more general agreement among mankind, as to the standard by which man 
and all of his acts ought to be tried, have made this power formidable beyond 

An Oration Delivered Before the Few and Phi Gamma Societies of Emory College, 
at Oxford, Ga., July, 1853 ( Augusta, Georgia: Steam Power Press of Chronicle and 
Sentinel, 1853). 

158 



ROBERT TOOMBS 159 

all former precedent in the world's history. Its jurisdiction seems to be uni- 
versal, circumscribed by no limits, bounded by no recognised land marks; it 
invades the sanctuaries of the Most High and questions his oracles— enters 
the palaces of kings and rulers, and the homes of the people, and summons 
all to answer at its bar. Being but the judgment of fallible man, it can 
claim no exemption from his errors, his frailties, his ignorance, or passions, 
yet being mischievous even in its errors, it is not wise or safe to disregard it. 

Before this tribunal our social and political system is arraigned, and we 
are summoned to answer. It is my purpose, to-day, to respond to the summons. 
I consider the occasion not inappropriate. The investigative discussion and 
decision of social questions are no longer confined to legislative halls and 
political assemblies of the people. The secluded halls of science already 
resound with the notes of controversy on the subject. 

Professors of some of the most ancient and eminent literary institutions in 
the Northern States have recently entered this arena against us, and their 
theological seminaries are animating the zeal, if not increasing the knowledge 
of the combatants. One of the professors of the theological college of New 
England is now traversing old England, traducing his countrymen and her 
institutions, and is appropriately remunerated in the pence and plaudits of 
her aristocracy. The British reviews and periodical literature have entered 
with zeal into the contest. The Muses have abandoned Arcadian groves and 
Elysian fields, and have taken up their abode in waving cane and blooming 
cotton fields. Romance revels in this literary El Dorado, and transmutes 
unreal woes into substantial coin. 

That the British government should second these assaults both at home 
and abroad, excites no surprise in those who have marked her policy or 
studied her history. She joins in this crusade under the cry of Religion, 
Humanity and Liberty, while her whole history proves that she has never, 
in her public policy, had the slightest regard for either. Her career, from 
William the Norman to this hour, has been but a continual warfare against 
the liberties and rights of the whole human race. Every continent of the 
earth, and every isle of the sea has been the theatre of her violence, in- 
humanity and injustice; no race, not even her own, has escaped her terrible 
energy in crime. 

[Here Toombs continues his censure of Great Britain. 1 



For nearly twenty years our domestic enemies have struggled by pen and 
speech to excite discontent among the white race, and insurrection among the 
black; their efforts have shaken the national government to its deep founda- 
tion, and bursted the bonds of Christian unity in our land. Yet the objects 
of their attacks— the slaveholding states— reposing in the confidence of their 



160 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

strength, have scarcely felt the shock. In glancing over the civilized world, 
the eye rests upon not a single spot where all classes of society are so well 
content with their social system, or have greater reason to be so, than in the 
slaveholding states of the American Union. Stability, progress, order, peace, 
content and prosperity, reign throughout our borders. Not a single soldier is 
to be found in our widely extended domain, to overawe or protect society. 
The desire for organic change nowhere manifests itself. These great social 
and political blessings are not the results of accident, but the results of a wise, 
just and humane republican system. It is my purpose to vindicate the wisdom, 
humanity, and justice of this system, to show that the position of the African 
race in it is consistent with its principles, advantageous to that race and 
society. 

African slavery existed in all the colonies at the commencement of the 
revolution. The paramount authority of the crown, with or without the con- 
sent of the colonies, had introduced and legalised it; it was inextricably inter- 
woven with the very frame work of society, especially in the Southern States. 
The question was not presented to us whether it was just or beneficial to the 
African, or advantageous to us to tear him away by force or fraud from bond- 
age in his own country, and place him in a like condition in ours. England 
and the Christian world had long since settled that question for us. At the 
final overthrow of British authority in these states, our ancestors found seven 
hundred thousand of the African race among them in bondage, concentrated, 
from the nature of our climate and production, chiefly in the present slave- 
holding states. It became their duty to establish governments over the coun- 
try from which their valour had driven out British authority. They entered 
upon this great work, profoundly impressed with the truth, that that govern- 
ment was best which secured the greatest happiness possible to the whole 
society, and adopted constitutional Republics as the best mode to secure that 
great end of human society. They incorporated no Utopian theories in their 
system. Starting from the point that each state was sovereign, and embodied 
the collective will and power of its whole people, they affirmed its right and 
duty to define and fix, as well as protect and defend the rights of each in- 
dividual member of the state, and to hold all individual rights as subordinate 
to the great interests of the whole society. This last proposition is the corner 
stone of Republican government, which must be stricken out before the legal 
status of the African race among us can be shown to be inconsistent with its 
principles. The question with the builders up of our system of government, 
was not what rights man might have in a state of nature, but what rights he 
ought to have in a state of society; they dealt with rights as things of compact 
and not of birthright, in the concrete and not in the abstract. A very slight 
examination of our state constitutions will show how little they regarded 
vague notions of abstract liberty or natural equality in fixing the rights of the 



ROBERT TOOMBS 



161 



white race, as well as the black. The elective franchise, the cardinal feature 
of our system, was granted, withheld, or limited, according to their ideas of 
public policy. It was withheld by all of them from females, not because they 
were deemed less competent to exercise it than many to whom it was granted, 
but because it was adjudged that their own and the public happiness would 
be promoted by the exclusion. 

All of them excluded minors because they were adjudged, as a class, in- 
competent to exercise it wisely. They all excluded the African race, free as 
well as bond, because as a race they were considered unfit to be trusted with 
it. All of them excluded the Indian tribes from that right, or any other in the 
social compact. The constitutions of some of the states excluded from the 
right of suffrage all persons except the owners of the soil, and all of them, it 
is believed, originally imposed some condition or restraint upon its exercise, 
applicable to all persons. The same great principle is no less happily illus- 
trated in the numerous restraints placed by both our state and national 
constitutions, upon the supposed abstract right of a mere numerical majority 
to govern society in all cases. Thus our institutions every where affirm the 
subordination of individual rights to the interest and safety of the whole 
society. 

The slave holders acting upon these principles, finding the Africans al- 
ready among them in slavery, unfit to be intrusted with political power, 
and incapable as freemen of either securing their own happiness, or promot- 
ing the public prosperity, recognised their condition as slaves, and subjected 
it to legal control. The justice and policy of this decision have both been 
greatly questioned, and both must depend upon the soundness of the as- 
sumptions upon which it was based. I hold that they were sound and true, 
and that the African is unfit to be intrusted with political power, and in- 
capable as a freeman of securing his own happiness or contributing to the 
public prosperity, and that whenever the two races co-exist, a state of slavery 
is best for him and for society. And under it, in our country, he is in a better 
condition than any he has ever attained in any other age and country, either 
in bondage or freedom. 



Very soon after the discovery and settlement of America, the policy of the 
Christian world bought large numbers of their people of their savage masters 
and countrymen, and imported them into the Western World. Here we 
are enabled to view them under different and far more favorable conditions. 
In Hayti, by the encouragement of the French government, after a long 
probation of slavery, they became free; and, led on by the valour and con- 
duct of the mixed breeds, aided by overpowering numbers, they massacred 
the small number of whites who inhabited the Island, and succeeded to the 



1 62 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

undisputed sway of the finest island in the West Indies under the highest 
state of cultivation. Their condition in Hayti left nothing to be desired for 
the most favorable experiment of the capacity of the race for self-government 
and civilization. This experiment has now been tested for sixty years, and 
its results are before the world. A war of races began the moment the fear 
of foreign invasion ceased, and resulted in the extermination of the greater 
number of the mulattoes who had rescued them from the dominion of the 
whites. Revolutions, tumults and disorders have been the ordinary pastimes 
of the emancipated blacks; production has almost ceased, and their stock of 
civilization acquired in slavery has become already exhausted, and they are 
now scarcely distinguishable from the tribes from which they were torn in 
their native land. 

More recently the same experiment has been tried in Jamaica, under the 
auspices of England. The Island of Jamaica was one of the most beautiful, 
productive, and prosperous of the British colonial possessions. England, de- 
ceived by the theories of her speculative philanthropists into the opinion 
that free blacks would be more productive laborers than slaves, in 1838 pro- 
claimed total emancipation of the black race in Jamaica. Her arms and her 
power have watched over and protected them; not only the interest but the 
absolute necessities of the white proprietors of the land compelled them to 
offer every inducement and stimulant to industry, yet the experiment stands 
before the world a confessed failure. Ruin has overwhelmed the proprietors; 
and the negro, true to his nationality, buries himself in filth, and sloth and 
crime. In the United States, too, we have peculiar opportunities for studying 
the African race under different conditions. Here we find him in slavery; 
here we find him also a freeman in the slaveholding and in the non-slave- 
holding states. The best specimen of the free blacks to be found are in the 
Southern States, in the closest contact with slavery and subject to many of its 
restraints. Upon the theory of the abolitionists the most favorable condition 
in which you can view the free negro is in the non-slaveholding states of the 
Union; there we ought to expect to find him displaying all the capability of 
his race for improvement, in a temperate climate, among an active, indus- 
trious, and ingenious people, surrounded by sympathising friends, and mild, 
and just, and equal institutions; if he fails here, surely it can be chargeable to 
nothing but himself. He has had seventy years to cleanse himself and his 
race from the leprosy of slavery, yet what is his condition to-day? He is lord 
of himself, but he finds it "a heritage of woe." After seventy years of probation 
among themselves, the Northern States, acting upon the same principles of 
self-protection which had marked our policy, declare him unfit to enjoy the 
rights and perform the duties of citizenship. Denied social equality by an 
irreversible law of nature, and political rights by municipal law, incapable 
of maintaining an unequal struggle with a superior race, the melancholy his- 



ftOBERT TOOMBS 1 63 

tory of his career of freedom is here most usually found recorded in criminal 
courts, jails, poor houses, and penitentiaries. The authentic statistics of crime 
and poverty show an amount of misery and crime among the free blacks 
out of all proportion to their numbers, when compared to any class of the 
white race. This fact has had itself recognised in the most decisive manner 
throughout the Northern States. No town, or city, or state, encourages their 
immigration; many of them discourage it by political legislation; and some 
of the non-slaveholding States have absolutely prohibited their entry into 
their borders, under any circumstances whatever. If the Northern States 
which adopt this policy, deny the truth of the principles upon which our 
policy is built and maintained, they are guilty of a most cruel injury to an 
unhappy race. They do admit it, and expel them from their borders and 
drive them out as wanderers and outcasts. The result of this policy is every 
where apparent. The statistics of population supply the evidence of their 
condition. In the non-slaveholding states their annual increase, during the 
last ten years, has been but little over one per cent., even with the additions 
of fugitives from labor and emancipated slaves from the South, clearly show- 
ing that in this their most favored condition when left to themselves they 
are barely capable of maintaining their existence, and with the prospect of 
a denser population and greater competition in labor for employment con- 
sequent thereon, they are in danger of becoming extinct. The Southern 
States, acting upon the same admitted fact, keep them in the condition in 
which we found them, protect them against themselves and compel them to 
contribute to their own and the public interests and welfare. That our system 
does promote the well-being of the African race subject to it, and the public 
interest I shall now proceed to show by facts which are open to all men and 
can be neither controverted or denied. We submit our slave institutions to 
the same tests by which we try the labor of other countries, and which are 
admitted to be sound by the common consent of mankind, and we say that 
under them we have not only elevated the African above his own race in 
any other country, but that his condition is superior to that of millions of 
laborers in England, who neglects her own to look after the condition of our 
operatives. 

Our political system gives the slave great and valuable rights. His life is 
equally protected with that of his master, his person is secure from assault 
against all others except his master, and his power in this respect is placed 
under salutary restraints. He is entitled by law to ample food and clothing, 
and exempted from excessive labor, and when no longer capable of labor, 
in old age or disease, his comfortable maintenance is a legal charge upon his 
master. We know that these rights are, in the main, faithfully secured to 
him. . . . But these legal rights of the slave embrace but a small portion 
of the privileges actually enjoyed by him. The nature of the relation of 



164 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

master and slave begets kindnesses, imposes duties (and secures their per- 
formance), which exist in no other relation of capital and labor. Interest and 
humanity co-operate in harmony for the well-being of our laborer. A striking 
evidence of this fact is found in our religious statistics. While religious in- 
struction is not enjoined by law in all the states, the number of slaves who 
are in communion with the different churches, abundantly proves the uni- 
versality of their enjoyment of religious privileges. And a learned clergyman 
in New York has recently shown, from the records of our evangelical 
churches, that a greater number of African slaves in the United States have 
enjoyed, and are enjoying, the consolations of religion than the combined 
efforts of all the Christian churches have been able to redeem from the 
heathen world, since the introduction of slavery among us. . . . 

It is objected that our slaves are debarred educational advantages. The 
objection is well taken, but is without great force; their station in society 
makes education neither necessary nor useful. . . . 

We are reproached that the marriage relation is neither recognised nor 
protected by law. This reproach is not wholly unjust, this is an evil not yet 
remedied by law, but marriage is not inconsistent with the institution of 
slavery as it exists among us, and the objection, therefore, lies rather to an 
incident than to the essence of the system. But even in this we have deprived 
the slave of no pre-existing right. We found the race without any knowledge 
of, or regard for the institution of marriage, and we are reproached for not 
having, as yet, secured that and all other blessings of civilization. The 
separation of families is much relied on by the abolitionists in Europe and 
America. Some of the slaveholding states have already made partial pro- 
vision against this evil, and all of them may do so; but the objection is far 
more formidable in theory than practice, even without legislative interposi- 
tion. 

The tendency of slave labor is to aggregation— of free labor to dispersion. 
The accidents of life, the desire to better one's condition, and the pressure 
of want (the proud man's contumely and oppressor's wrong) produce in- 
finitely a greater amount of separation in families of the white races than that 
which ever happened to the slave. This is true every where, even in the 
United States, where the general condition of the people is prosperous. But 
it is still more marked in Europe. The injustice and despotism of England 
to Ireland has produced more separation of Irish families, and sundered more 
domestic ties within the last ten years, than slavery has effected since its 
introduction into the United States. The twenty millions of freemen in the 
United States are living witnesses to the dispersive injustice of the old 
world. And to-day England is purchasing coolies in India, and apprentices in 
Africa, to redeem her West India possessions from the folly of emancipation. 
What securities has she thrown around the family altars of these miserable 



ROBERT TOOMBS 1 65 

savages? It is in vain to call this separation voluntary— if it were true, that 
fact mitigates none of its evils. But it is the result of a necessity as stern, 
inexorable and irresistible, as the physical force which brings the slave from 
Virginia to Georgia. 

But the monster objection to our institution of slavery in the estimation 
of its opponents is, that wages are withheld from labor— the force of the 
objection is lost in its want of truth. An examination of the true theory of 
wages will expose its fallacy. Under the system of free labor, wages are paid 
in money, the representative of products, in ours in products themselves. If 
we pay, in the comforts of life, more than the free laborer's pecuniary wages 
will buy, then our laborer is paid higher wages than the free laborer. The 
Parliamentary Reports in England show that the wages of agricultural and 
unskilled labor in Great Britain not only fails to furnish the laborer with 
the comforts of the slave, but even with the necessaries of life, and no slave 
holder in Georgia could escape a conviction for cruelty to his slaves who 
exacted from them the same amount of labor, for the same compensation in 
the necessaries of life, which noblemen and gentlemen of England pay their 
free laborers. Under their system man has become less valuable and less 
cared for than their domestic animals; and noble Dukes will depopulate 
whole districts of men to supply their places with sheep, and then with 
intrepid audacity lecture and denounce American slaveholders. 

The great conflict between labor and capital under free competition has 
ever been how the earnings of labor shall be divided between it and capital. 
In new and sparsely settled countries, where land is cheap, and food is easily 
produced, and education and intelligence approximate equality, labor can 
struggle successfully in this warfare with capital. But this is an exceptional 
and temporary condition of society. In the old world this state of things has 
long since passed away, and the conflict with the lower grades of labor has 
long since ceased. There the compensation of unskilled labor, which first 
succumbs to capital, is reduced to a point scarcely adequate to the continuance 
of the race. . . . Here the portion due the slave is a charge upon the whole 
product of capital and upon the capital itself. It is neither dependent upon 
seasons nor subject to accidents, and survives his own capacity for labor and 
even the ruin of his master. The general happiness, cheerfulness, and con- 
tentment of the slaves, compare favorably with that of laborers in any other 
age or country. They require no standing armies to enforce their obedience, 
while the evidences of discontent, and the appliance of force to repress it, are 
every where visible among the toiling millions of the earth. Even in the 
northern states of this Union, strikes and mobs, and labor unions, and com- 
binations against employers, attest at once the misery and discontent of labor 
among them. . . . 

That the condition of the slave offers great opportunities for abuse is true, 



1 66 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

that these opportunities are frequently used to violate justice and humanity, 
is also true. But our laws restrain these abuses and punish these crimes, in 
this, as well as in all the other relations of life. They who assume it as a 
fundamental principle in the constitution of man, that abuse is the unvarying 
concomitant of power and crime of opportunity, subvert the foundations of 
all private morals and of every social system. No where does this principle 
find a nobler refutation than in the treatment of the African race by southern 
slaveholders. And we may, with hope and confidence, safely leave to them 
the removal of the existing abuses under which it now labors and such 
further ameliorations of its condition as may be demanded by justice and 
humanity. His condition is not permanent among us and we may find his 
exodus in the unvarying laws of population. Under the conditions of labor 
in England, and the continent of Europe, slavery could not exist here or 
anywhere else. The moment wages descend to a point barely sufficient to 
support the laborer and his family, capital cannot afford to own labor, and 
slavery instantly ceases. Slavery ceased in England in obedience to this law, 
and not from any regard to liberty or humanity. The increase of population 
will produce the same result in this country, and American slavery, like that 
of England, will find its euthanasy in the general prostration of all labor. 

The next aspect in which I propose to view this question, is its effects 
upon the interests of the slaveholding states themselves. The great argument 
by which slavery was formerly assailed was that it was a dear, unprofitable and 
unproductive labor; it was held that the slave himself would be a more 
productive member of society as a freeman than in bondage. The results of 
emancipation in the British and French West India Islands has not only 
disproven but annihilated this theory. And an inquiry into the wealth and 
production of our slaveholding states will demonstrate that slave labor can 
be more economically and productively applied, at least to agriculture, than 
any other. The same truth will be made manifest by a comparison of the 
products of Cuba and Brazil, not only with these Islands and Hayti, but with 
those of the free races occupying the same latitudes and engaged in the 
same, or similar productions, in any part of the world. The slaveholding 
states with about one-half of the white population, and three millions of 
slaves, furnish four-fifths of the whole exports of the Republic containing 
twenty-three millions of inhabitants, and their entire products, including 
every branch of industry, exceed those of the more populous northern states. 
And a distinguished statesman of our own state has recently conclusively 
shown, by an accurate examination of our statistics, that Georgia with less 
than half of the population, about equals, in her productions of industry, 
the State of Ohio, one of the most prosperous of the northern states. The 
difference in realised wealth in proportion to population is not less remark- 
able and equally favorable to the slaveholding states. 

I may safely leave the question of the fitness of slave labor for the produc- 



ROBERT TOOMBS 1 67 

tion of wealth, to the authentic facts disclosed in the late census. But the 
fact needs some explanation, as it seems to be a profound mystery to the 
opponents of slavery, how the system is capable at the same time of increas- 
ing the comforts of the slave, the profits of the master, and do no violence to 
humanity. Yet its solution rests upon the soundest principles of political 
economy. Here the labor of the country is united with and protected by its 
capital, directed by the educated and intelligent, secured against its own 
weakness, waste and folly, associated in such form, as to give the greatest 
efficiency in production, and the least cost of maintenance. Each individual 
laborer of the North is the victim not only of his folly and extravagance, 
but of his ignorance, misfortunes and necessities. His isolation enlarges his 
expenses without increasing his comforts, his want of capital increases the 
price of everything he buys, disables him from supplying his wants at favor- 
able times, or on advantageous terms, and throws him in the hands of re- 
tailers and extortioners. But labor united with capital, directed by skill, fore- 
cast and intelligence, while it is capable of its highest production, is freed 
from these evils, leaves a margin both for increased comforts to the laborer 
and additional profits to capital. This is the explanation of the seeming 
paradox. 

The opponents of slavery, true to their monomania that it is the sum of 
all evils and crimes, in spite of all history, sacred and profane, ancient or 
modern, all facts and all truth, insist that its effect on the commonwealth is 
to enervate it, demoralise it, and render it incapable of advancement and a 
high civilization, and upon the citizen to debase him morally, physically 
and intellectually. Such is neither the truth of history, sacred or profane, 
nor the experience of our own past or present. To the Hebrew race were 
committed the oracles of the Most High, slaveholding priests administered 
at his altar, and slaveholding patriarchs and prophets received his revelations, 
taught them to their own, and transmitted them to all generations of men. 
Letters, and arts, and science, and power, and wealth, and dominion, first 
arose from the dark night of the past in slaveholding Egypt. The highest 
forms of ancient civilization, and the noblest development of the individual 
man, are to be found in the ancient commonwealths of Greece and Rome. 
In Greece, liberty, in the midst of domestic slavery, first erected legal barriers 
against political despotism, and maintained them with a heroism which has 
excited the admiration of all subsequent ages. 

In great achievements in arms, in science and arts, she stands preeminent 
among the nations of the earth. Statesmen study her institutions, and learn 
lessons of political wisdom, and the highest intellects of every age have de- 
lighted in her literature, notwithstanding the boasted advancement of our 
age. Homer, Demosthenes, Aristode, Thucydides, and Xenophon, are yet 
text books in our schools and colleges; and in eloquence, in rhetoric, in 
poetry, in painting, in sculpture and architecture, you must still go and search 



1 68 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

amid the wreck and ruins of her genius for "the pride of every model and 
the perfection of every master." 

Public liberty and domestic slavery were cradled together and marked 
the civil polity of the commonwealth of ancient Rome. Her hardy sons, 
distinguished for personal prowess, for frugality and simplicity of manners, 
for public and private virtue, and the intensity of their patriotism, carried 
her victorious eagles in triumph over the then known world. She overran 
Greece, appropriated her civilization, studied her literature, and rivalled her 
glory in letters. She carried her civilization with her conquests over western 
Europe, and time has not yet been able to efface the footprints of her lan- 
guage, her literature, or her liberty; and her jurisprudence, surviving her 
nationality, has incorporated itself in that of all the civilized nations of 
Europe and America. The language and literature of both, stamped with 
immortality, passes on to mingle itself in the thought and speech of all lands 
and all countries. But it is needless to multiply illustrations. That domestic 
slavery neither enfeebles or deteriorates our race, that it is not inconsistent 
with the highest advancement of man or society, is the lesson taught by all 
ancient and confirmed by all modern history. 

Its effects in strengthening rather than weakening the attachment of the 
dominant race to liberty was clearly perceived and eloquently expressed 
in the British Parliament by Edmund Burke, one of the most accomplished 
and philosophical statesmen England ever produced. Mr. Burke, in his speech 
on conciliation with America, uses the following language: 

Where this is the case, those who are free, are by far the most proud and 
jealous of their freedom. ... I can not alter the nature of man. The fact is so, 
and these people of the southern colonies are much more strongly, and with 
a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty than those to the northward. 
Such were all the ancient commonwealths, such were our Gothic ancestors, and 
such in our day were the Poles; and such will be all masters of slaves who are 
not slaves themselves. In such a people the haughtiness of domination combines 
itself with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible. 

[Toombs goes on to discuss the historic contributions of Southerners to the 
spirit of American liberty.] 



Such is our social system and such our condition under it. Its political 
wisdom is vindicated in its effects on society, its morality by the practices 
of the Patriarchs and the teachings of the Apostles; we submit it to the 
judgment of the civilized world with the firm conviction that the adoption of 
no other system under our circumstances would have exhibited the individual 
man (bond or free) in a higher development, or society in a happier civiliza- 
tion. 



No Compromise with Slavery 
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 



Born, Newbury port, Massachusetts, December 10, 1805; 
died, New York City, May 2,4, 1879. Largely self-edu- 
cated. Entered newspaper work as an apprentice and 
became editor successively of several reform papers. 
Founded the Liberator, 1830. Helped found the New 
England Anti-Slavery Society, 1831, and the American 
Anti-Slavery Society, 1833. Espoused various reforms but 
is best known as a militant crusader for abolitionism. 



A 



n earnest espousal of the Anti-Slavery cause for a 
quarter of a century, under circumstances which have 
served in a special manner to identify my name and labours with it, will 
shield me from the charge of egotism, in assuming to be its exponent— at least 
for myself— on this occasion. All that I can compress within the limits of a 
single lecture, by way of its elucidation, it shall be my aim to accomplish. I 
will make a clean breast of it. You shall know all that is in my heart per- 
taining to Slavery, its supporters, and apologists. 

Of necessity, as well as of choice, I am a "Garrisonian" Abolitionist— the 
most unpopular appellation that any man can have applied to him, in the 
present state of public sentiment; yet, I am more than confident, destined 
ultimately to be honourably regarded by the wise and good. For though I 
have never assumed to be a leader— have never sought conspicuity of position, 
or notoriety of name— have desired to follow, if others, better qualified, would 
go before, and to be lost sight of in the throng of Liberty's adherents, as a 
drop is merged in the ocean; yet, as the appellation alluded to is applied, not 
with any reference to myself invidiously, but to excite prejudice against 

An Address Delivered in the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, February 14, 1854, 
By William Lloyd Garrison (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1854). 

169 



170 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

the noblest movement of the age, in order that the most frightful system of 
oppression ever devised by human ingenuity and wickedness may be 
left to grow and expand to the latest generation— I accept it as the synonym 
of absolute trust in God, and utter disregard of "that fear of man which 
bringeth a snare"— and so deem it alike honourable and praiseworthy. 

Representing, then, that phase of Abolitionism which is the most con- 
temned—to the suppression of which, the means and forces of the Church 
and the State are most actively directed— I am here to defend it against all 
its assailants as the highest expediency, the soundest philosophy, the noblest 
patriotism, the broadest philanthropy, and the best religion extant. To de- 
nounce it as fanatical, disorganizing, reckless of consequences, bitter and 
irreverent in spirit, infidel in heart, deaf alike to the suggestions of reason 
and the warnings of history, is to call good evil, and evil good; to put dark- 
ness for light, and light for darkness; to insist that Barabbas is better than 
Jesus; to cover with infamy the memories of patriarchs and prophets, apostles 
and martyrs; and to inaugurate Satan as the God of the universe. If, like the 
sun, it is not wholly spotless, still, like the sun, without it there is no light. 
If murky clouds obscure its brightness, still it shines in its strength. If, at any 
time, it seems to wane to its final setting, it is only to reveal itself in the 
splendour of a new ascension, unquenchable, glorious, sublime. 

Let me define my positions, and at the same time challenge any one to 
show wherein they are untenable. 

I. I am a believer in that portion of the Declaration of American Inde- 
pendence in which it is set forth, as among self-evident truths, "that all men 
are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain 
inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness." Hence, I am an Abolitionist. Hence, I cannot but regard oppres- 
sion in every form— and most of all, that which turns a man into a thing— 
with indignation and adhorrence. Not to cherish these feelings would be 
recreancy to principle. They who desire me to be dumb on the subject of 
Slavery, unless I will open my mouth in its defence, ask me to give the lie 
to my professions, to degrade my manhood, and to stain my soul. I will not 
be a liar, a poltroon, or a hypocrite, to accommodate any party, to gratify any 
sect, to escape any odium or peril, to save any interest, to preserve any in- 
stitution, or to promote any object. Convince me that one man may rightfully 
make another man his slave, and I will no longer subscribe to the Declaration 
of Independence. Convince me that liberty is not the inalienable birthright 
of every human being, of whatever complexion or clime, and I will give that 
instrument to the consuming fire. I do not know how to espouse freedom and 
slavery together. I do not know how to worship God and Mammon at the 
same time. If other men choose to go upon all-fours, I choose to stand erect, 
as God designed every man to stand. If, practically falsifying its heaven- 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON *7 l 

attested principles, this nation denounces me for refusing to imitate its 
example, then, adhering all the more tenaciously to those principles, I will 
not cease to rebuke it for its guilty inconsistency. Numerically, the contest 
may be an unequal one, for the time being; but the Author of liberty and 
the Source of justice, the adorable God, is more than multitudinous, and he 
will defend the right. My crime is, that I will not go with the multitude to 
do evil. My singularity is, that when I say that Freedom is of God, and 
Slavery is of the devil, I mean just what I say. My fanaticism is, that I insist 
on the American people abolishing Slavery, or ceasing to prate of the rights 
of man. . . . 

II. Notwithstanding the lessons taught us by Pilgrim Fathers and Revolu- 
tionary Sires, at Plymouth Rock, on Bunker Hill, at Lexington, Concord 
and Yorktown; notwithstanding our Fourth of July celebrations, and osten- 
tatious displays of patriotism; in what European nation is personal liberty 
held in such contempt as in our own? Where are there such unbelievers in 
the natural equality and freedom of mankind? Our slaves outnumber the 
entire population of the country at the time of our revolutionary struggle. 
In vain do they clank their chains, and fill the air with their shrieks, and 
make their supplications for mercy. In vain are their sufferings portrayed, 
their wrongs rehearsed, their rights defended. As Nero fiddled while Rome 
was burning, so the slaveholding spirit of this nation rejoices, as one barrier 
of liberty after another is destroyed, and fresh victims are multiplied for the 
cotton-field and the auction-block. For one impeachment of the slave system, 
a thousand defences are made. For one rebuke of the man-stealer, a thousand 
denunciations of the Abolitionists are heard. For one press that bears a faithful 
testimony against Slavery, a score are ready to be prostituted to its service. 
For one pulpit that is not "recreant to its trust," there are ten that openly 
defend slaveholding as compatible with Christianity, and scores that are 
dumb. For one church that excludes the human enslaver from its com- 
munion table, multitudes extend to him the right hand of religious fellowship. 
The wealth, the enterprise, the literature, the politics, the religion of the 
land, are all combined to give extension and perpetuity to the Slave Power. 
Everywhere to do homage to it, to avoid collision with it, to propitiate its 
favour, is deemed essential— nay, is essential to political preferment and 
ecclesiastical advancement. Nothing is so unpopular as impartial liberty. The 
two great parties which absorb nearly the whole voting strength of the 
Republic are pledged to be deaf, dumb and blind to whatever outrages the 
Slave Power may attempt to perpetrate. Cotton is in their ears— blinds are 
over their eyes— padlocks are upon their lips. They are as clay in the hands 
of the potter, and already moulded into vessels of dishonour, to be used for 
the vilest purposes. The tremendous power of the Government is actively 
wielded to "crush out" the little Anti-Slavery life that remains in individual 



172 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

hearts, and to open new and boundless domains for the expansion of the 
Slave system. No man known or suspected to be hostile to "the Compromise 
Measures, including the Fugitive Slave Law," is allowed to hope for any office 
under the present Administration. The ship of State is labouring in the 
trough of the sea— her engine powerless, her bulwarks swept away, her masts 
gone, her lifeboats destroyed, her pumps choked, and the leak gaining rapidly 
upon her; and as wave after wave dashes over her, all that might otherwise 
serve to keep her afloat is swallowed by the remorseless deep. God of heaven! 
if the ship is destined to go down "full many a fathom deep," is every soul 
on board to perish? Ho! a sail! a sail! The weather-beaten, but staunch ship 
Abolition, commanded by the Genius of Liberty, is bearing towards the 
wreck, with the cheering motto, inscribed in legible capitals, "we will not 
forsake you!" Let us hope, even against hope, that rescue is not wholly 
impossible. 

To drop what is figurative for the actual. I have expressed the belief that, 
so lost to all self-respect and all ideas of justice have we become by the cor- 
rupting presence of Slavery, in no European nation is personal liberty held 
at such discount, as a matter of principle, as in our own. See how clearly 
this is demonstrated. The reasons adduced among us in justification of slave- 
holding, and therefore against personal liberty, are multitudinous. I will 
enumerate only a dozen of these: 1. "The victims are black." 2. "The slaves 
belong to an inferior race." 3. "Many of them have been fairly purchased." 
4. "Others have been honestly inherited." 5. "Their emancipation would 
impoverish their owners." 6. "They are better off as slaves than they would 
be as freemen." 7. "They could not take care of themselves if set free." 8. 
"Their simultaneous liberation would be attended with great danger." 9. 
"Any interference in their behalf will excite the ill-will of the South, and 
thus seriously affect Northern trade and commerce." 10. "The Union can 
be preserved only by letting Slavery alone, and that is of paramount im- 
portance." 1 1 . "Slavery is a lawful and constitutional system, and therefore 
not a crime." 12. "Slavery is sanctioned by the Bible; the Bible is the word 
of God; therefore God sanctions Slavery, and the Abolitionists are wise 
above what is written." 

Here, then, are twelve reasons which are popularly urged in all parts of 
the country, as conclusive against the right of a man to himself. If they are 
valid, in any instance, what becomes of the Declaration of Independence? 
On what ground can the revolutionary war, can any struggle for liberty, be 
justified? Nay, cannot all the despotisms of the earth take shelter under them? 
If they are valid, then why is not the Jesuitical doctrine, that the end 
sanctifies the means, and that it is right to do evil that good may come, 
morally sound? If they are valid, then how does it appear that God is no 
respecter of persons? or how can he say, "All souls are mine"? or what is to 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 173 

be done with Christ's injunction, "Call no man master"? or with what 
justice can the same duties and the same obligations (such as are embodied 
in the Decalogue and the gospel of Christ) be exacted of chattels as of 
men? 

But they are not valid. They are the logic of Bedlam, the morality of the 
pirate ship, the diabolism of the pit. They insult the common sense and 
shock the moral nature of mankind. 

[He quotes from a variety of foreign writers and statesmen to prove that 
"in regard to personal liberty . . . even Italy, Austria, and Tunis are in 
advance of this boasted Republic."] 



III. The Abolitionism which I advocate is as absolute as the law of God, 
and as unyielding as His throne. It admits of no compromise. Every slave is 
a stolen man; every slaveholder is a man-stealer. By no precedent, no example, 
no law, no compact, no purchase, no bequest, no inheritance, no combination 
of circumstances, is slaveholding right or justifiable. While a slave remains 
in his fetters, the land must have no rest. Whatever sanctions his doom must 
be pronounced accursed. The law that makes him a chattel is to be trampled 
under foot; the compact that is formed at his expense, and cemented with 
his blood, is null and void; the church that consents to his enslavement is 
horribly atheistical; the religion that receives to its communion the enslaver is 
the embodiment of all criminality. Such, at least, is the verdict of my own 
soul, on the supposition that I am to be the slave; that my wife is to be sold 
from me for the vilest purposes; that my children are to be torn from my 
arms, and disposed of to the highest bidder, like sheep in the market. And 
who am I but a man"? What right have I to be free, that another man cannot 
prove himself to possess by nature? Who or what are my wife and children, 
that they should not be herded with four-footed beasts, as well as others thus 
sacredly related? If I am white, and another is black, complexionally, what 
follows? 

Does, then, th* immortal principle within 
Change with the casual colour of the skin? 
Does matter govern spirit? or is mind 
Degraded by the form to which 'tis joined? 

What if I am rich, and another is poor— strong, and he is weak— intelligent, 
and he is benighted— elevated, and he is depraved? "Have we not one Father? 
Hath not one God created us?" 

How rich, how poor, how abject, how august, 
How complicate, how wonderful is man! 
Distinguished link in being's endless chain, 



174 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

Midway from nothing to the Deity! 
A beam ethereal, sullied and absorpt; 
Though sullied and dishonoured, still divine! 

Such is man, in every clime— above all compacts, greater than all institu- 
tions, sacred against every outrage, priceless, immortal! 

By this sure test, every institution, every party, every form of government, 
every kind of religion, is to be tried. God never made a human being either 
for destruction or degradation. It is plain, therefore, that whatever cannot 
flourish except at the sacrifice of that being, ought not to exist. Show me the 
party that can obtain supremacy only by trampling upon human individuality 
and personal sovereignty, and you will thereby pronounce sentence of death 
upon it. Show me the government which can be maintained only by destroy- 
ing the rights of a portion of the people, and you will indicate the duty of 
openly revolting against it Show me the religion which sanctions the owner- 
ship of one man by another, and you will demonstrate it to be purely infernal 
in its origin and spirit. 

No man is to be injured in his person, mind, or estate. He cannot be with 
benefit to any other man, or to any state of society. Whoever would sacrifice 
him for any purpose is both morally and politically insane. Every man is 
equivalent to every other man. Destroy the equivalent, and what is left? 
"So God created man in his own image— male and female created he them." 
This is a death-blow to all claims of superiority, to all charges of inferiority, 
to all usurpation, to all oppressive dominion. 

But all these declarations are truisms. Most certainly; and they are all that 
is stigmatized as "Garrisonian Abolitionism." I have not, at any time, ad- 
vanced an ultra sentiment, or made an extravagant demand. I have avoided 
fanaticism on the one hand, and folly on the other. No man can show that 
I have taken one step beyond the line of justice, or forgotten the welfare 
of the master in my anxiety to free the slave. ... If the slaves are not men; 
if they do not possess human instincts, passions, faculties and powers; if they 
are below accountability, and devoid of reason; if for them there is no hope 
of immortality, no God, no heaven, no hell; if, in short, they are, what the 
Slave Code declares them to be, rightly "deemed, sold, taken, reputed and 
adjudged in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and 
possessors, and their executors, administrators and assigns, to all intents, 
constructions, and purposes whatsoever;" then, undeniably, I am mad, and 
can no longer discriminate between a man and a beast. But, in that case, 
away with the horrible incongruity of giving them oral instruction, of teach- 
ing them the catechism, of recognising them as suitably qualified to be 
members of Christian churches, of extending to them the ordinance of 
baptism, and admitting them to the communion table, and enumerating many 
of them as belonging to the household of faith! Let them be no more in- 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 1 75 

eluded in our religious sympathies or denominational statistics than are the 
dogs in our streets, the swine in our pens, or the utensils in our dwellings. 
It is right to own, to buy, to sell, to inherit, to breed, and to control them, in 
the most absolute sense. All constitutions and laws which forbid their 
possession ought to be so far modified or repealed as to concede the right. 

But, if they are men; if they are to run the same career of immortality with 
ourselves; if the same law of God is over them as over all others; if they have 
souls to be saved or lost; if Jesus included them among those for whom he 
laid down his life; if Christ is within many of them "the hope of glory"; 
then, when I claim for them all that we claim for ourselves, because we are 
created in the image of God, I am guilty of no extravagance, but am bound, 
by every principle of honour, by all the claims of human nature, by obedience 
to Almighty God, to "remember them that are in bonds as bound with them," 
and to demand their immediate and unconditional emancipation. 

[Garrison defends himself against charges of fanaticism, and goes on to lay 
the blame for the growth and extension of slavery on both North and South.] 



Some men are still talking of preventing the spread of the cancer, but 
leaving it just where it is. They admit that, constitutionally, it has now a 
right to ravage two-thirds of the body politic— but they protest against its 
extension. This is moral quackery. Even some, whose zeal in the Anti-Slavery 
cause is fervent, are so infatuated as to propose no other remedy for Slavery 
but its non-extension. Give it no more room, they say, and it may be safely 
left to its fate. Yes, but who shall "bell the cat"? Besides, with fifteen Slave 
States, and more than three millions of Slaves, how can we make any moral 
issue with the Slave Power against its further extension? Why should there 
not be twenty, thirty, fifty Slave States, as well as fifteen? Why should not 
the star-spangled banner wave over ten, as well as over three millions of 
Slaves? Why should not Nebraska be cultivated by Slave labour, as well as 
Florida or Texas? If men, under the American Constitution, may hold slaves 
at discretion and without dishonour in one-half of the country, why not in 
the whole of it? If it would be a damning sin for us to admit another Slave 
State into the Union, why is it not a damning sin to permit a Slave State 
to remain in the Union? Would it not be the acme of effrontery for a man, 
in amicable alliance with fifteen pickpockets, to profess scruples of conscience 
in regard to admitting another pilfering rogue to the fraternity? "Thou that 
sayest, A man should not steal, dost thou steal," or consent, in any instance, 
to stealing? "If the Lord be God, serve Him; but if Baal, then serve him." 
The South may well laugh to scorn the affected moral sensibility of the 
North against the extension of her slave system. It is nothing, in the present 
relations of the States, but sentimental hypocrisy. It has no stamina— no back- 



I76 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

bone. The argument for non-extension is an argument for the dissolution of 
the Union. With a glow of moral indignation, I protest against the promise 
and the pledge, by whomsoever made, that if the Slave Power will seek no 
more to lengthen its cords and strengthen its stakes, it may go unmolested 
and unchallenged, and survive as long as it can within its present limits. I 
would as soon turn pirate on the high seas as to give my consent to any 
such arrangement. I do not understand the moral code of those who, scream- 
ing in agony at the thought of Nebraska becoming a Slave Territory, virtually 
say to the South: "Only desist from your present designs, and we will leave 
you to flog, and lacerate, and plunder, and destroy the millions of hapless 
wretches already within your grasp. If you will no longer agitate the subject, 
we will not." There is no sense, no principle, no force in such an issue. Not 
a solitary slaveholder will I allow to enjoy repose on any other condition 
than instantly ceasing to be one. Not a single slave will I leave in his chains, 
on any conditions, or under any circumstances. I will not try to make as good 
a bargain for the Lord as the Devil will let me, and plead the necessity of 
a compromise, and regret that I cannot do any better, and be thankful that 
I can do so much. The Scriptural injunction is to be obeyed: "Resist the 
devil, and he will flee from you." My motto is, "No union with slaveholders, 
religiously or politically." Their motto is "Slavery forever! No alliance with 
Abolitionists, either in Church or State!" The issue is clear, explicit, deter- 
minate. The parties understand each other, and are drawn in battle array. 
They can never be reconciled— never walk together— never consent to a truce— 
never deal in honeyed phrases— never worship at the same altar— never 
acknowledge the same God. Between them there is an impassable gulf. In 
manners, in morals, in philosophy, in religion, in ideas of justice, in notions 
of law, in theories of government, in valuations of men, they are totally 
dissimilar. 

I would to God that we might be, what we have never been— a united 
people; but God renders this possible only by "proclaiming liberty throughout 
all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." By what miracle can Freedom 
and Slavery be made amicably to strike hands? How can they administer 
the same Government, or legislate for the same interests? How can they 
receive the same baptism, be admitted to the same communion-table, believe 
in the same Gospel, and obtain the same heavenly inheritance? . . . The 
present American Union, therefore, is only one in form, not in reality. It is, 
and it always has been, the absolute supremacy of the Slave Power over the 
whole country— nothing more. What sectional heart-burnings or conflictive 
interests exist between the several Free States? None. They are homogeneous, 
animated by the same spirit, harmonious in their action as the movement of 
the spheres. It is only when we come to the dividing line between the Free 
States and the Slave States that shoals, breakers and whirlpools beset the ship 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 177 

of State, and threaten to engulf or strand it. Then the storm rages loud and 
long, and the ocean of popular feeling is lashed into fury. 

While the present Union exists, I pronounce it hopeless to expect any 
repose, or that any barrier can be effectually raised against the extension 
of Slavery. With two thousand million dollars' worth of property in human 
flesh in its hands, to be watched and wielded as one vast interest for all 
the South— with forces never divided, and purposes never conflictive— with 
a spurious, negro-hating religion universally diffused, and everywhere ready 
to shield it from harm— with a selfish, sordid, divided North, long since bereft 
of its manhood, to cajole, bribe and intimidate— with its foot planted on two- 
thirds of our vast national domains, and there unquestioned, absolute and 
bloody in its sway— with the terrible strength and boundless resources of the 
whole country at its command— it cannot be otherwise than that the Slave 
Power will consummate its diabolical purposes to the uttermost. The North- 
west Territory, Nebraska, Mexico, Cuba, Hayti, the Sandwich Islands, and 
colonial possessions in the tropics— to seize and subjugate these to its accursed 
reign, and ultimately to re-establish the foreign Slave Trade as a lawful 
commerce, are among its settled designs. It is not a question of probabilities, 
but of time. And whom will a just God hold responsible for all these results? 
All who despise and persecute men on account of their complexion; all who 
endorse a slave-holding religion as genuine; all who give the right hand of 
Christian fellowship to men whose hands are stained with the blood of the 
slave; all who regard material prosperity as paramount to moral integrity, and 
the law of the land as above the law of God; all who are either hostile or 
indifferent to the Anti-Slavery movement; and all who advocate the necessity 
of making compromises with the Slave Power, in order that the Union may 
receive no detriment. 

In itself, Slavery has no resources and no strength. Isolated and alone, it 
could not stand an hour; and, therefore, further aggression and conquest 
would be impossible. 

Says the Editor of the Marysville (Tenn.) Intelligencer, in an article on 
the character and condition of the slave population: 

We of the South are emphatically surrounded by a dangerous class of beings 
—degraded, stupid savages— who, if they could but once entertain the idea that 
immediate and unconditional death would not be their portion, would re-enact 
the St. Domingo tragedy. But the consciousness, with all their stupidity, that a 
ten-fold force, superior in discipline, if not in barbarity, would gather from the 
four corners of the United States and slaughter them, keeps them in subjection. 
But, to the non-slaveholding States, -particularly, we are indebted for a permanent 
safeguard against insurrection. Without their assistance, the white population of 
the South would be too weak to quiet that insane desire for liberty which is ever 
ready to act itself out with every rational creature. 



I78 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

In the debate in Congress on the resolution to censure John Quincy Adams, 
for presenting a petition for the dissolution of the Union, Mr. Underwood, 
of Kentucky, said: 

They (the South) were the weaker portion, were in the minority. The North 
could do what they pleased with them; they could adopt their own measures. 
All he asked was, that they would let the South know what those measures were. 
One thing he knew well; that State, which he in part represented, had perhaps 
a deeper interest in this subject than any other, except Maryland and a small 
portion of Virginia. And why? Because he knew that to dissolve the Union, 
and separate the different States composing the confederacy, making the Ohio 
River and the Mason and Dixon's line the boundary line, he knew as soon as 
that was done, Slavery was done in Kentucky, Maryland and a large portion of 
Virginia, and it would extend to all the States South of this line. The dissolution 
of the Union was the dissolution of Slavery. It has been the common practice 
for Southern men to get up on this floor, and say, "Touch this subject, and we 
will dissolve this Union as a remedy." Their remedy was the destruction of the 
thing which they wished to save, and any sensible man could see it. If the 
Union was dissolved into two parts, the slave would cross the line, and then 
turn round and curse the master from the other shore. 






These witnesses can neither be impeached nor ruled out of Court, and 
their testimony is true. While, therefore, the Union is preserved, I see no 
end to the extension or perpetuity of Chattel Slavery— no hope for peaceful 
deliverance of the millions who are clanking their chains on our blood-red 
soil. Yet I know that God reigns, and that the slave system contains within 
itself the elements of destruction. But how long it is to curse the earth, and 
desecrate his image, he alone foresees. It is frightful to think of the capacity 
of a nation like this to commit sin, before the measure of its iniquities be 
filled, and the exterminating judgments of God overtake it. . . . 

These are solemn times. It is not a struggle for national salvation; for the 
nation, as such, seems doomed beyond recovery. The reason why the South 
rules, and the North falls prostrate in servile terror, is simply this: With the 
South, the preservation of Slavery is paramount to all other considerations- 
above party success, denominational unity, pecuniary interest, legal integrity, 
and constitutional obligation. With the North, the preservation of the Union 
is placed above all other things— above honour, justice, freedom, integrity 
of soul, the Decalogue and the Golden Rule— the Infinite God himself. All 
these she is ready to discard for the Union. Her devotion to it is the latest 
and the most terrible form of idolatry. She has given to the Slave Power a 
carte blanche, to be filled as it may dictate— and if, at any time, she grows 
restive under the yoke, and shrinks back aghast at the new atrocity con- 
templated, it is only necessary for that Power to crack the whip of Disunion 



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 179 

over her head, as it has done again and again, and she will cower and obey 
like a plantation slave— for has she not sworn that she will sacrifice everything 
in heaven and on earth, rather than the Union? 

What then is to be done? Friends of the slave, the question is not whether 
by our efforts we can abolish Slavery, speedily or remotely— for duty is ours, 
the result is with God; but whether we will go with the multitude to do 
evil, sell our birthright for a mess of pottage, cease to cry aloud and spare 
not, and remain in Babylon when the command of God is, "Come out of 
her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive 
not of her plagues." Let us stand in our lot, "and having done all, to stand." 
At least, a remnant shall be saved. Living or dying, defeated or victorious, 
be it ours to exclaim, "No compromise with Slavery! Liberty for each, for all, 
forever! Man above all institutions! The supremacy of God over the whole 
earth!" 



A House Divided 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



Born near Hodgenville, Kentucky, February 12, 1809; 
died, Washington, D.C., April 15, 1865. Largely self- 
educated. Worked as farm-hand, clerk in a store, surveyor, 
postmaster. Admitted to Illinois bar, 1836. Member of 
Illinois legislature, 1 834-1 842; of United States House 
of Representatives, 1847-1849. Unsuccessful as candidate 
for United States Senate in 1855 and 1858. As the candi- 
date of the Republican -party, was elected President of 
the United States in i860 and 1864. 



M 



r. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: If 
we could first know where we are, and whither we 
are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. 

We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the 
avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. 

Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, 
but has constantly augmented. 

In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and 
passed. 

"A house divided against itself cannot stand." 

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and 
half free. 

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—! do not expect the house to 
fall— but I do expect it will cease to be divided. 

It will become all one thing, or all the other. 

Republican State Convention, Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858. Paul M. Angle, ed., 
Created Equal? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 1-9. Reprinted by 
permission. 

180 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



181 



Either the off orients of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and 
place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of 
ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become 
alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new— North as well as South. 

Have we no tendency to the latter condition? 

Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete 
legal combination— piece of machinery so to speak— compounded of the 
Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only 
what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also, 
let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather 
fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of action, among 
its chief bosses, from the beginning. 

But, so far, Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by the people, 
real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the point already gained, and 
give chance for more. 

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the 
states by state constitutions, and from most of the national territory by con- 
gressional prohibition. 

Four days later, commenced the struggle, which ended in repealing that 
congressional prohibition. 

This opened all the national territory to slavery; and was the first point 
gained. 

This necessity had not been overlooked; but had been provided for, as well 
as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter sovereignty," otherwise 
called "sacred right of self government," which latter phrase, though expres- 
sive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this 
attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man choose to 
enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. 

That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska Bill itself, in the 
language which follows: "It being the true intent and meaning of this act 
not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor exclude it therefrom; 
hut to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their 
domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of 
the United States" 

Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "Squatter Sover- 
eignty," and "Sacred right of self government. " 

"But," said opposition members, "let us be more specific— let us amend the 
bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the territory may exclude 
slavery." "Not we/' said the friends of the measure; and down they voted the 
amendment. 

While the Nebraska Bill was passing through Congress, a law case, in- 
volving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having 



1 82 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

voluntarily taken him first into a free state and then a territory covered by 
the congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave, for a long time in 
each, was passing through the U. S. Circuit Court for the District of 
Missouri; and both Nebraska Bill and law suit were brought to a decision 
in the same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was "Dred Scott," which 
name now designates the decision finally made in the case. 

Before the then next presidential election, the law case came to, and was 
argued in the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it 
was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trum- 
bull, on the floor of the Senate, requests the leading advocate of the Nebraska 
Bill to state his opinion whether the people of the territory can constitu- 
tionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter answers, "That is a 
question for the Supreme Court." 

The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such 
as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement, how- 
ever, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred thousand 
votes, and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. 

The outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively as 
possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the in- 
dorsement. 

The Supreme Court met again; did not announce their decision, but 
ordered a reargument. 

The presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but 
the incoming President, in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the 
people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. 

Then, in a few days, came the decision. 

The reputed author of the Nebraska Bill finds an early occasion to make 
a speech at this capitol indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently 
denouncing all opposition to it. 

The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter 
to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment 
that any different view had ever been entertained. 

At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of 
the Nebraska Bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton 
constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas; 
and in that squabble the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for 
the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. 
I do not understand his declaration that he cares not whether slavery be 
voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other than as an apt defini- 
tion of the policy he would impress upon the public mind— the principle 
for which he declares he has suffered much, and is ready to suffer to the 
end. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 1 83 

And well may he cling to that principle. If he has any parental feeling, 
well may he cling to it. That principle is the only shred left of his original 
Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision, "squatter sovereignty" 
squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding— like the 
mould at the foundry served through one blast and fell back into loose sand- 
helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint 
struggle with the Republicans, against the Lecompton constitution involves 
nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a 
point, the right of a people to make their own constitution, upon which he 
and the Republicans have never differed. 

The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator 
Douglas' "care not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present 
state of advancement. This was the third point gained. 

The working points of that machinery are: 

First, that no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant 
of such slave can ever be a citizen of any state, in the sense of that term as 
used in the Constitution of the United States. 

This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, 
of the benefit of this provision of the United States Constitution, which 
declares that— 

"The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities 
of citizens in the several states." 

Secondly, that "subject to the Constitution of the United States," neither 
Congress nor a territorial legislature can exclude slavery from any United 
States territory. 

This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the territories 
with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus to enhance 
the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future. 

Thirdly, that whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free state, 
makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will not 
decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave state the negro 
may be forced into by the master. 

This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in 
for a while, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to 
sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully 
do with Dred Scott, in the free state of Illinois, every other master may law- 
fully do with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any 
other free state. 

Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska 
doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould public opinion, at 
least Northern public opinion, to not care whether slavery is voted down or 
voted up. 



184 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

This shows exactly where we now are; and partially also, whither we are 
tending. 

It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back, and run the mind 
over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things will now ap- 
pear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring. The 
people were to be left "perfectly free" "subject only to the Constitution." 
What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see. 
Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche, for the Dred Scott 
decision to afterwards come in, and declare the perfect freedom of the people 
to be just no freedom at all. 

Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people to 
exclude slavery, voted down? Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would 
have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision. 

Why was the court decision held up? Why even a Senator's individual 
opinion withheld, till after the presidential election? Plainly enough now, the 
speaking out then would have damaged the "perfectly free" argument upon 
which the election was to be carried. 

Why the outgoing President's felicitation on the indorsement? Why the 
delay of a reargument? Why the incoming President's advance exhortation 
in favor of the decision? 

These things look like the cautious patting and petting a spirited horse, 
preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the rider 
a fall. 

And why the hasty after-indorsements of the decision by the President and 
others? 

We can not absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result 
of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of 
which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by 
different workmen— Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James,* for instance— and 
when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the 
frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and 
all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their 
respective places, and not a piece too many or too few— not omitting even 
scaffolding— or, if a single piece be lacking, we can see the place in the frame 
exactly fitted and prepared to yet bring such piece in— in such a case, we find 
it impossible to not believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James 
all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a com- 
mon plan or draft drawn up before the first lick was struck. 

It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska Bill, the people of a 
state as well as territory, were to be left "perfectly free" "subject only to the 
Constitution" 

* Stephen A. Douglas, Franklin Pierce, Roger B. Taney, James Buchanan. 






ABRAHAM LINCOLN 1 85 

Why mention a state? They were legislating for territories, and not for or 
about states. Certainly the people of a state are and ought to be subject to 
the Constitution of the United States; but why is mention of this lugged 
into this merely territorial law? Why are the people of a territory and the 
people of a state therein lumped together, and their relation to the Constitu- 
tion therein treated as being precisely the same? 

While the opinion of the Court, by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott 
case, and the separate opinions of all the concurring judges, expressly declare 
that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a 
territorial legislature to exclude slavery from any United States territory, they 
all omit to declare whether or not the same constitution permits a state, or 
the people of a state, to exclude it. 

Possibly, this was a mere omission; but who can be quite sure, if McLean 
or Curtis* had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of unlimited power 
in the people of a state to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase and 
Macyt sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the people of a territory, 
into the Nebraska Bill— I ask, who can be quite sure that it would not have 
been voted down, in the one case, as it had been in the other. 

The nearest approach to the point of declaring the power of a state over 
slavery, is made by Judge Nelson. J He approaches it more than once, using 
the precise idea, and almost the language too, of the Nebraska Act. On one 
occasion his exact language is, 'except in cases where the power is restrained 
by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the state is supreme over 
the subject of slavery within its jurisdiction." 

In what cases the power of the states is so restrained by the U. S. Constitu- 
tion, is left an open question, precisely as the same question, as to the re- 
straint on the power of the territories was left open in the Nebraska Act. 
Put that and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we 
may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that 
the Constitution of the United States does not permit a state to exclude 
slavery from its limits. 

And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of "care not whether 
slavery be voted down or voted up" shall gain upon the public mind suffi- 
ciently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made. 

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all 
the states. 

Welcome or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon 
be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met 
and overthrown. 

We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are 

* Justices John McLean and Benjamin R. Curtis, who filed dissenting opinions, 
t Senator Salmon P. Chase of Ohio and Representative Daniel Macy of Indiana. 
$ Justice Samuel Nelson. 



1 86 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

on the verge of making their state free; and we shall awake to the reality, 
instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave state. 

To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty, is the work now before 
all those who would prevent that consummation. 

That is what we have to do. 

But how can we best do it? 

There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet 
whisper us softly, that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is, with 
which to effect that object. They do not tell us, nor has he told us, that he 
wishes any such object to be effected. They wish us to infer all, from the 
facts, that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty; 
and that he has regularly voted with us, on a single point, upon which he 
and we have never differed. 

They remind us that he is a very great man, and that the largest of us are 
very small ones. Let this be granted. But "a living dog is better than a dead 
lion." Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion for this work, is at least a caged and 
toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care 
anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the "public heart" to 
care nothing about it. 

A leading Douglas Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas' superior talent 
will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave trade. 

Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has 
not said so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For 
years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro 
slaves into the new territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred 
right to huy them where they can be bought cheapest? And, unquestionably 
they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. 

He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to 
one of a mere right of property; and as such, how can he oppose the foreign 
slave trade— how can he refuse that trade in that "property" shall be "per- 
fectly free"— unless he does it as a protection to the home production? And as 
the home producers will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly 
without a ground of opposition. 

Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day 
than he was yesterday— that he may rightfully change when he finds himself 
wrong. 

But, can we for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any 
particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation? Can we 
safely base our action upon any such vague inference? 

Now, as ever, I wish to not misrepresent Judge Douglas' position, question 
his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. 

Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 1 87 

great cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have inter- 
posed no adventitious obstacle. 

But clearly, he is not now with us— he does not pretend to be— he does not 
promise to ever be. 

Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by its own undoubted 
friends— those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work— who do 
care for the result. 

Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hun- 
dred thousand strong. 

We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, 
with every external circumstance against us. 

Of strange, discordant, and even, hostile elements, we gathered from the 
four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant 
hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. 

Did we brave all then, to falter now?— wow— when that same enemy is 
wavering, dissevered and belligerent? 

The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail— if we stand firm, we shall 
not fail. 

Wise councils may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later the 
victory is sure to come. 



Popular Sovereignty 
STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 



Born, Brandon, Vermont, April 23, 18 13; died, Chicago, 
Illinois, June 3, 1861. Attended schools at Brandon, and 
at Canandaigua, New York. Admitted to Illinois har, 
1834; states attorney, 1835; judge of Illinois Supreme 
Court, 1841-1843. Member of Illinois legislature, 1835- 
1837. Secretary of State for Illinois, 1840. Member of 
United States House of Representatives, 1 843-1847; of 
United States Senate, 184.J-1&61. Sought unsuccessfully 
the nomination for the Presidency in 1852 and 1856. 
Nominated by Democrats in i860 for President of the 
United States, whereupon the Southern wing of the party 
withdrew and nominated John C. Breckinridge. Split in 
the Democratic party gave Lincoln his victory. Vigorously 
supported Lincoln's efforts to preserve the Union. 



M 



r. Chairman and Fellow-Citizens: I can find no 
language which can adequately express my pro- 
found gratitude for the magnificent welcome which you have extended to 
me on this occasion. This vast sea of human faces indicates how deep an 
interest is felt by our people in the great questions which agitate the public 
mind, and which underlie the foundations of our free institutions. A recep- 
tion like this, so great in numbers that no human voice can be heard to its 
countless thousands— so enthusiastic that no one individual can be the object 
of such enthusiasm— clearly shows that there is some great principle which 
sinks deep in the heart of the masses, and involves the rights and the liberties 
of a whole people, that has brought you together with a unanimity and a 

Chicago, Illinois, July 9, 1858. Paul M. Angle, ed., Created Equal? (Chicago: Uni- 
versity of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 12-24. Reprinted by permission. 



STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 1 89 

cordiality never before excelled, if, indeed, equalled on any occasion. I have 
not the vanity to believe that it is any personal compliment to me. 

It is an expression of your devotion to that great principle of self-govern- 
ment, to which my life for many years past has been, and in the future will 
be devoted. If there is any one principle dearer and more sacred than all 
others in free governments, it is that which asserts the exclusive right of a 
free people to form and adopt their own fundamental law, and to manage 
and regulate their own internal affairs and domestic institutions. 

When I found an effort being made during the recent session of Congress 
to force a constitution upon the people of Kansas against their will, and 
to force that state into the Union with a constitution which her people had 
rejected by more than 10,000, I felt bound as a man of honor and a repre- 
sentative of Illinois, bound by every consideration of duty, of fidelity, and 
of patriotism, to resist to the utmost of my power the consummation of that 
fraud. With others I did resist it, and resisted it successfully until the attempt 
was abandoned. We forced them to refer that constitution back to the people 
of Kansas, to be accepted or rejected as they shall decide at an election, which 
is fixed for the first Monday of August next. It is true that the mode of 
reference, and the form of the submission was not such as I could sanction 
with my vote, for the reason that it discriminated between free states and 
slave states; providing that if Kansas consented to come in under the Lecomp- 
ton constitution it should be received with a population of 35,000; but that 
if she demanded another constitution, more consistent with the sentiments 
of her people and their feelings, that it should not be received into the 
Union until she has 93,420 inhabitants. I did not consider that mode of 
submission fair, for the reason that any election is a mockery which is not 
free— that any election is a fraud upon the right of the people which holds 
out inducements for affirmative votes, and threatens penalties for negative 
votes. But whilst I was not satisfied with the mode of submission, whilst I 
resisted it to the last, demanding a fair, a just, a free mode of submission, 
still, when the law passed placing it within the power of the people of 
Kansas at that election to reject the Lecompton constitution, and then make 
another in harmony with their principles and their opinions, I did not be- 
lieve that either the penalties on the one hand, or the inducements on the 
other, would force that people to accept a constitution to which they are 
irreconcilably opposed. All I can say is, that if their votes can be controlled 
by such considerations, all the sympathy which has been expended upon 
them has been misplaced, and all the efforts that have been made in defence 
of their right to self-government have been made in an unworthy cause. 

Hence, my friends, I regard the Lecompton battle as having been fought 
and the victory won, because the arrogant demand for the admission of Kansas 
under the Lecompton constitution unconditionally, whether her people 



190 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

wanted it or not, has been abandoned, and the principle which recognizes the 
right of the people to decide for themselves has been submitted to its place. 



The great principle is the right of every community to judge and decide 
for itself, whether a thing is right or wrong, whether it would be good or evil 
for them to adopt it; and the right of free action, the right of free thought, the 
right of free judgment upon the question is dearer to every true American 
than any other under a free government. My objection to the Lecompton 
contrivance was that it undertook to put a constitution on the people of 
Kansas against their will, in opposition to their wishes, and thus violated the 
great principle upon which all our institutions rest. It is no answer to this 
argument to say that slavery is an evil and hence should not be tolerated. You 
must allow the people to decide for themselves whether it is a good or an evil. 
You allow them to decide for themselves whether they desire a Maine liquor 
law or not; you allow them to decide for themselves what kind of common 
schools they will have; what system of banking they will adopt, or whether 
they will adopt any at all; you allow them to decide for themselves the rela- 
tions between husband and wife, parent and child, the guardian and ward; 
in fact, you allow them to decide for themselves all other questions, and why 
not upon this question? Whenever you put a limitation upon the right of any 
people to decide what laws they want, you have destroyed the fundamental 
principle of self-government. 

In connection with this subject, perhaps, it will not be improper for me on 
this occasion to allude to the position of those who have chosen to arraign my 
conduct on this same subject. I have observed from the public prints that but 
a few days ago the Republican party of the state of Illinois assembled in con- 
vention at Springfield, and not only laid down their platform, but nominated 
a candidate for the United States Senate as my successor. I take great pleasure 
in saying that I have known, personally and intimately, for about a quarter of 
a century, the worthy gentleman who has been nominated for my place, and I 
will say that I regard him as a kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman, a 
good citizen and an honorable opponent; and whatever issue I may have with 
him will be of principle, and not involving personalities.— Mr. Lincoln made 
a speech before that Republican Convention which unanimously nominated 
him for the Senate— a speech evidently well prepared and carefully written— 
in which he states the basis upon which he proposes to carry on the campaign 
during this summer. In it he lays down two distinct propositions which I shall 
notice, and upon which I shall take a direct and bold issue with him. 

His first and main proposition I will give in his own language, scripture 
quotations and all, (laughter) I give his exact language—" 'A house divided 
against itself cannot stand/ I believe this government cannot endure, per- 



STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 191 

manently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. 
I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it to cease to be divided. It 
will become all one thing or all the other." 

In other words, Mr. Lincoln asserts as a fundamental principle of this gov- 
ernment, that there must be uniformity in the local laws and domestic institu- 
tions of each and all the states of the Union; and he therefore invites all the 
non-slaveholding states to band together, organize as one body, and make war 
upon slavery in Kentucky, upon slavery in Virginia, upon the Carolinas, upon 
slavery in all of the slave-holding states in this Union, and to persevere in that 
war until it shall be exterminated. He then notifies the slaveholding states to 
stand together as a unit and make an aggressive war upon the free states of 
this Union with a view of establishing slavery in them all; of forcing it upon 
Illinois, of forcing it upon New York, upon New England, and upon every 
other free state, and that they shall keep up the warfare until it has been 
formally established in them all. In other words, Mr. Lincoln advocates boldly 
and clearly a war of sections, a war of the North against the South, of the free 
states against the slave states— a war of extermination— to be continued relent- 
lessly until the one or the other shall be subdued and all the states shall either 
become free or become slave. 

Now, my friends, I must say to you frankly, that I take bold, unqualified 
issue with him upon that principle. I assert that it is neither desirable nor pos- 
sible that there should be uniformity in the local institutions and domestic 
regulations of the different states of this Union. The framers of our govern- 
ment never contemplated uniformity in its internal concerns. The fathers of 
the Revolution, and the sages who made the Constitution well understood 
that the laws and domestic institutions which would suit the granite hills of 
New Hampshire would be totally unfit for the rice plantations of South 
Carolina; they well understood that the laws which would suit the agricul- 
tural districts of Pennsylvania and New York would be totally unfit for the 
large mining regions of the Pacific, or the lumber regions of Maine. They 
well understood that the great varieties of soil, of production and of interests, 
in a republic as large as this, required different local and domestic regulations 
in each locality, adapted to the wants and interests of each separate state, and 
for that reason it was provided in the federal Constitution that the thirteen 
original states should remain sovereign and supreme within their own limits 
in regard to all that was local, and internal, and domestic, while the federal 
government should have certain specified powers which were general and 
national, and could be exercised only by the federal authority. 

The framers of the Constitution well understood that each locality, having 
separate and distinct interests, required separate and distinct laws, domestic 
institutions, and police regulations adapted to its own wants and its own con- 
dition; and they acted on the presumption, also, that these laws and institu- 



192 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

tions would be as diversified and as dissimilar as the states would be numer- 
ous, and that no two would be precisely alike, because the interests of the 
two would [not] be precisely the same. Hence, I assert, that the great funda- 
mental principle which underlies our complex system of state and federal 
governments, contemplated diversity and dissimilarity in the local institu- 
tions and domestic affairs of each and every state then in the Union, or there- 
after to be admitted into the confederacy. I therefore conceive that my friend, 
Mr. Lincoln, has totally misapprehended the great principles upon which our 
government rests. Uniformity in local and domestic affairs would be destruc- 
tive of state rights, of state sovereignty, of personal liberty and personal 
freedom. Uniformity is the parent of despotism the world over, not only in 
politics, but in religion. Wherever the doctrine of uniformity is proclaimed, 
that all the states must be free or all slave, that all labor must be white or all 
black, that all the citizens of the different states must have the same privi- 
leges or be governed by the same regulations, you have destroyed the greatest 
safeguard which our institutions have thrown around the rights of the 
citizen. 

How could this uniformity be accomplished, if it was desirable and pos- 
sible? There is but one mode in which it could be obtained, and that must be 
by abolishing the state legislatures, blotting out state sovereignty, merging the 
rights and sovereignty of the states in one consolidated empire, and vesting 
Congress with the plenary power to make all the police regulations, domestic 
and local laws, uniform throughout the limits of the Republic. When you 
shall have done this you will have uniformity. Then the states will all be slave 
or all be free; then negroes will vote everywhere or nowhere; then you will 
have a Maine liquor law in every state or none; then you will have uniformity 
in all things local and domestic by the authority of the federal government. 
But when you attain that uniformity, you will have converted these thirty- 
two sovereign, independent states into one consolidated empire, with the uni- 
formity of despotism reigning triumphant throughout the length and breadth 
of the land. 

From this view of the case, my friends, I am driven irresistibly to the con- 
clusion that diversity, dissimilarity, variety in all our local and domestic in- 
stitutions, is the great safeguard of our liberties; and that the framers of our 
institutions were wise, sagacious, and patriotic when they made this govern- 
ment a confederation of sovereign states with a legislature for each, and 
conferred upon each legislature the power to make all local and domestic 
institutions to suit the people it represented, without interference from any 
other state or from the general Congress of the Union. If we expect to main- 
tain our liberties we must preserve the rights and sovereignty of the states, we 
must maintain and carry out that great principle of self-government incor- 
porated in the compromise measures of 1850: endorsed by the Illinois legis- 



STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 1 93 

lature in 1851; emphatically embodied and carried out in the Kansas- 
Nebraska Bill, and vindicated this year by the refusal to bring Kansas into 
the Union with a constitution distasteful to her people. 

The other proposition discussed by Mr. Lincoln in his speech consists in a 
crusade against the Supreme Court of the United States on account of the 
Dred Scott decision. On this question, also, I desire to say to you unequi- 
vocally, that I take direct and distinct issue with him. I have no warfare to 
make on the Supreme Court of the United States, either on account of that 
or any other decision which they have pronounced from that bench. The 
Constitution of the United States has provided that the powers of govern- 
ment (and the constitution of each state has the same provision) shall be 
divided into three departments, executive, legislative, and judicial. The right 
and the province of expounding the Constitution, and construing the law, is 
vested in the judiciary established by the Constitution.— As a lawyer, I feel 
at liberty to appear before the Court and controvert any principle of law while 
the question is pending before the tribunal; but when the decision is made, 
my private opinion, your opinion, all other opinions must yield to the majesty 
of that authoritative adjudication. I wish you to bear in mind that this in- 
volves a great principle, upon which our rights, our liberty and our property 
all depend. What security have you for your property, for your reputation, 
and for your personal rights, if the courts are not upheld, and their decisions 
respected when once firmly rendered by the highest tribunal known to the 
Constitution? I do not choose, therefore, to go into any argument with 
Mr. Lincoln in reviewing the various decisions which the Supreme Court 
has made, either upon the Dred Scott case, or any other. I have no idea of 
appealing from the decision of the Supreme Court upon a constitutional ques- 
tion to the decisions of a tumultuous town meeting. I am aware that once an 
eminent lawyer of this city, now no more, said that the state of Illinois had 
the most perfect judicial system in the world, subject to but one exception, 
which could be cured by a slight amendment, and that amendment was to so 
change the law as to allow an appeal from the decisions of the Supreme Court 
of Illinois, on all constitutional questions, to Justice of the Peace. 

My friend, Mr. Lincoln, who sits behind me, reminds me that that proposi- 
tion was made when I was Judge of the Supreme Court. Be that as it may, I 
do not think that fact adds any greater weight or authority to the suggestion. 
It matters not with me who was on the bench, whether Mr. Lincoln or myself, 
whether a Lockwood or a Smith, a Taney or a Marshall; the decision of the 
highest tribunal known to the Constitution of the country must be final till 
it has been reversed by an equally high authority. Hence, I am opposed to 
this doctrine of Mr. Lincoln, by which he proposes to take an appeal from the 
decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, upon this high constitu- 
tional question to a Republican caucus sitting in the country. Yes, or any 



194 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

other caucus or town meeting, whether it be Republican, American, or Demo- 
cratic. I respect the decisions of that august tribunal; I shall always bow in 
deference to them. I am a law-abiding man. I will sustain the Constitution of 
my country as our fathers have made it. I will yield obedience to the laws, 
whether I like them or not, as I find them on the statute book. I will sustain 
the judicial tribunals and constituted authorities in all matters within the pale 
of their jurisdiction as defined by the Constitution. 

But I am equally free to say that the reason assigned by Mr. Lincoln for 
resisting the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case does not in 
itself meet my approbation. He objects to it because that decision declared 
that a negro descended from African parents who were brought here and sold 
as slaves is not, and cannot be a citizen of the United States. He says it is 
wrong, because it deprives the negro of the benefits of that clause of the Con- 
stitution which says that citizens of one state shall enjoy all the privileges and 
immunities of citizens of the several states; in other words, he thinks it wrong 
because it deprives the negro of the privileges, immunities, and rights of 
citizenship, which pertain, according to that decision, only to the white man. 
I am free to say to you that in my opinion this government of ours is founded 
on the white basis. It was made by the white man, for the benefit of the white 
man, to be administered by white men, in such manner as they should deter- 
mine. It is also true that a negro, an Indian, or any other man of an inferior 
race to a white man, should be permitted to enjoy, and humanity requires that 
he should have all the rights, privileges and immunities which he is capable 
of exercising consistent with the safety of society. I would give him every 
right and every privilege which his capacity would enable him to enjoy, con- 
sistent with the good of the society in which he lived. But you may ask me 
what are these rights and these privileges. My answer is that each state must 
decide for itself the nature and extent of these rights. Illinois has decided for 
herself. We have decided that the negro shall not be a slave, and we have at 
the same time decided that he shall not vote, or serve on juries, or enjoy 
political privileges. I am content with that system of policy which we have 
adopted for ourselves. I deny the right of any other State to complain of our 
policy in that respect, or to interfere with it, or to attempt to change it. On the 
other hand, the state of Maine has decided that in that state a negro man may 
vote on an equality with the white man. The sovereign power of Maine had 
the right to prescribe that rule for herself. Illinois has no right to complain of 
Maine for conferring the right of negro suffrage, nor has Maine any right to 
interfere with, or complain of Illinois because she has denied negro suffrage. 

The state of New York has decided by her constitution that a negro may 
vote, provided that he own $250 worth of property, but not otherwise. The 
rich negro can vote, but the poor one cannot. Although that distinction does 
not commend itself to my judgment, yet I assert that the sovereign power of 



STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 1 95 

New York had a right to prescribe that form of the elective franchise. Ken- 
tucky, Virginia, and other states have provided that negroes, or a certain class 
of them in those states, shall be slaves, having neither civil or political rights. 
Without endorsing the wisdom of that decision, I assert that Virginia has the 
same power by virtue of her sovereignty to protect slavery within her limits, 
as Illinois has to banish it forever from our own borders. I assert the right of 
each state to decide for itself on all these questions and I do not subscribe to 
the doctrine of my friend, Mr. Lincoln, that uniformity is either desirable 
or possible. I do not acknowledge that the states must all be free or must all 
be slave. 

I do not acknowledge that the negro must have civil and political rights 
everywhere or nowhere. I do not acknowledge that the Chinese must have the 
same rights in California that we would confer upon him here. I do not 
acknowledge that the coolie imported into this country must necessarily be 
put upon an equality with the white race. I do not acknowledge any of these 
doctrines of uniformity in the local and domestic regulations in the different 
states. 

Thus you see, my fellow-citizens, that the issues between Mr. Lincoln and 
myself, as respective candidates for the U.S. Senate, as made up, are direct, 
unequivocal, and irreconcilable. He goes for uniformity in our domestic in- 
stitutions, for a war of sections, until one or the other shall be subdued. I go 
for the great principle of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the right of the people to 
decide for themselves. 

On the other point, Mr. Lincoln goes for a warfare upon the Supreme 
Court of the United States, because of their judicial decision in the Dred 
Scott case. I yield obedience to the decisions of that Court— to the final deter- 
mination of the highest judicial tribunal known to our Constitution. He 
objects to the Dred Scott decision because it does not put the negro in the 
possession of the rights of citizenship on an equality with the white man. I am 
opposed to negro equality. I repeat that this nation is a white people— a people 
composed of European descendants— a people that have established this gov- 
ernment for themselves and their posterity, and I am in favor of preserving 
not only the purity of the blood, but the purity of the government from any 
mixture or amalgamation with inferior races. I have seen the effects of this 
mixture of superior and inferior races— this amalgamation of white men and 
Indians and negroes; we have seen it in Mexico, in Central America, in South 
America, and in all the Spanish-American states, and its result has been 
degeneration, demoralization, and degradation below the capacity for self- 
government. 

I am opposed to taking any step that recognizes the negro man or the 
Indian as the equal of the white man. I am opposed to giving him a voice in 
the administration of the government. I would extend to the negro, and the 



I96 A HOUSE DIVIDED 

Indian, and to all dependent races every right, every privilege, and every 
immunity consistent with the safety and welfare of the white races; but 
equality they never should have, either political or social, or in any other 
respect whatever. 

My friends, you see that the issues are distinctly drawn. I stand by the 
same platform that I have so often proclaimed to you and to the people of 
Illinois heretofore. I stand by the Democratic organization, yield obedience 
to its usages, and support its regular nominations. I endorse and approve the 
Cincinnati platform, and I adhere to and intend to carry out as part of that 
platform, the great principle of self-government, which recognizes the right 
of the people in each state and territory to decide for themselves their domestic 
institutions. In other words, if the Lecompton issue shall arise again, you 
have only to turn back and see where you have found me during the last six 
months, and then rest assured that you will find me in the same position, 
battling for the same principle, and vindicating it from assault from whatever 
quarter it may come, so long as I have the power to do it. 

Fellow-citizens, you now have before you the outlines of the propositions 
which I intend to discuss before the people of Illinois during the pending 
campaign. I have spoken without preparation and in a very desultory manner, 
and may have omitted some points which I desired to discuss, and may have 
been less explicit on others than I could have wished. I have made up my 
mind to appeal to the people against the combination which has been made 
against me. The Republican leaders have formed an alliance, an unholy, un- 
natural alliance with a portion of the unscrupulous federal office-holders. I 
intend to fight that allied army wherever I meet them. I know they deny the 
alliance while avowing the common purpose, but yet these men who are try- 
ing to divide the Democratic party for the purpose of electing a Republican 
Senator in my place, are just as much the agents, the tools, the supporters of 
Mr. Lincoln as if they were avowed Republicans, and expect their reward 
for their services when the Republicans come into power. I shall deal with 
these allied forces just as the Russians dealt with the allies at Sebastopol. The 
Russians when they fired a broadside at the common enemy did not stop to 
inquire whether it hit a Frenchman, an Englishman or a Turk, nor will I stop 
to inquire, nor shall I hesitate, whether my blows hit the Republican leaders 
or their allies, who are holding the federal offices and yet acting in concert 
with the Republicans to defeat the Democratic party and its nominees. I do 
not include all of the federal office holders in this remark. Such of them as 
are Democrats and show their Democracy by remaining inside of the Demo- 
cratic organization and supporting its nominees, I recognize as Democrats, 
but those who, having been defeated inside of the organization, go outside 
and attempt to divide and destroy the party in concert with the Republican 
leaders, have ceased to be Democrats, and belong to the allied army whose 



STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 1 97 

avowed object is to elect the Republican ticket by dividing and destroying the 
Democratic party. 

My friends, I have exhausted myself, and I certainly have fatigued you, in 
the long and desultory remarks which I have made. It is now two nights since 
I have been in bed, and I think I have a right to a little sleep. I will, however, 
have an opportunity of meeting you face to face, and addressing you on more 
than one occasion before the November election. In conclusion, I must again 
say to you, justice to my own feelings demands it, that my gratitude for the 
welcome you have extended to me on this occasion knows no bounds, and can 
be described by no language which I can command. I see that I am literally 
at home when among my constituents. This welcome has amply repaid me 
for every effort that I have made in the public service during nearly twenty- 
five years that I have held office at your hands. It not only compensates me 
for the past, but it furnishes an inducement and incentive for future effort 
which no man, no matter how patriotic, can feel who has not witnessed the 
magnificent reception you have extended to me to-night on my return. 



RECONSTRUCTION OF THE 
FEDERAL UNION 



Abraham Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Address de- 
livered March 4, 1865, clearly and movingly expressed 
the spirit in which he proposed to deal with the problems 
of postwar reconstruction: 

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firm- 
ness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us 
strive on to finish the work we are in; to hind up the nation's 
wounds . . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a 
just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations. 

A month later "the work we are in" was finished; Lee sur- 
rendered to Grant at Appomattox, and the Civil War was 
over. In another week President Lincoln was dead. 

While the war was still in progress, Lincoln had laid 
down the provisions of his plan for restoring the Union. 
Remarkably generous in its terms, it offered full amnesty 
and pardon for those taking a loyalty oath (excepted from 
the oath were certain groups, such as high civil and mili- 
tary officers of the Confederacy). When ten percent of 
the voters of i860 should have taken this oath of al- 
legiance, they might then proceed to form a state govern- 
ment, after which they would he recognized as having 
resumed proper relations with the Union. It was hoped 
through this "Ten Per Cent Plan" to establish in each 
state a nucleus of loyal citizens which would grow as 
others were drawn to it. 

198 



RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FEDERAL UNION 1 99 

These magnanimous conditions for restoration were, 
however, completely unacceptable to Republican leaders 
of Congress, who favored much more stringent measures, 
and who believed that they, and not the President, should 
have charge of reconstruction. In order to set aside Lin- 
coln's efforts and establish a Congressional plan, the 
Wade-Davis bill was passed in June, 1864. On July 4, 
Congress being adjourned, the President disposed, of this 
bill by a pocket veto. The administrative branch had for 
the moment gained the upper hand; but the debate on the 
bill, the President's veto message, and the angry response 
it evoked, all revealed the extent of the difference be- 
tween the executive and Congress with respect to recon- 
struction policies. 

At the time of Lincoln's death no plan of reconstruc- 
tion had actually been adopted. Republican Congressional 
leaders welcomed the accession of Andrew Johnson to the 
Presidency, feeling that he would prove more tractable 
than his predecessor, and inferring from his vigorous de- 
nunciation of secession that he was inclined to their point 
of view. One of the chief points of controversy continued 
to be the political status of the states which had con- 
stituted the Confederacy. This question, of course, had 
an important bearing on the steps necessary to effect a 
restoration or reconstruction of the Union. President Lin- 
coln had taken the line that the Southern states had not, 
in fact, seceded— that they were, therefore, never actually 
out of the Union, but "out of proper relation to the 
Union." He reasoned, therefore, that it was up to the 
President to decide when a state was sufficiently repentant 
to be adjudged once more in proper relation to the Union, 
although the admission of individual Senators and Rep- 
resentatives remained the right of Congress alone. Sena- 
tor Charles Sumner's theory of "state suicide" held that 
the states had by seceding abandoned their Constitutional 
rights and had been reduced to the status of mere terri- 



200 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FEDERAL UNION 

tories; they were, consequently, under the jurisdiction of 
Congress. Representative Thaddeus Stevens went still 
farther. The Southern states, he maintained, had indeed 
seceded; they had left the Union. They had subsequently 
been defeated in a war. They were, therefore, conquered 
provinces, at the complete mercy of their conquerors. 

The "Radical Republicans," as Congressional advocates 
of a harsh reconstruction policy were called, were im- 
pelled by a variety of motives. Their leaders, Sumner in 
the Senate and Stevens in the House, both had long 
championed Negro emancipation; both were filled with 
animus toward the slavocracy. But there was a practical 
political motivation as well. The Radicals sought to pro- 
vide for the continued ascendency of the Republican 
party by avoiding an alliance of Southern and Northern 
Democrats against the industrial interests of the North. 
This they hoped to accomplish by disfranchising and ulti- 
mately destroying the great planter class, making Re- 
publican voters of the Negroes, and placing political con- 
trol in the hands of loyal whites. Thaddeus Stevens made 
no attempt to conceal this political motivation. He can- 
didly offered as an argument in favor of the First Recon- 
struction Act that "it would insure the ascendency of the 
Union [Republican] party." He went on to assert his 
belief "that on the continued ascendency of that party 
depends the safety of this nation. If impartial suffrage is 
excluded in the rebel States, then every one of them is 
sure to send a solid rebel representative delegation to 
Congress, and cast a solid rebel electoral vote." 

The hopes of men like Sumner and Stevens that the 
new President would cooperate with them in imposing 
their vindictive, iron-fisted policies upon the South soon 
proved mistaken. After an initial period of vacillation, 
Johnson accepted the main features of Lincoln's plan 
and, even more infuriating to the Congressional leaders, 
he followed Lincoln in his insistence that reconstruction 



RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FEDERAL UNION 201 

was an executive and not a legislative function. His 
amnesty proclamation issued six weeks after Lincoln's 
death, and subsequent proclamations appointing provi- 
sional governors instructed to call conventions of dele- 
gates who had taken the oath of allegiance, were inter- 
preted as indications that Johnson would adhere to Lin- 
coln's policies, and as a virtual declaration of war against 
the vengeful Radical Republicans. 

By the time the Thirty-ninth Congress convened in 
December, 1865, all the Southern states but Texas had 
formed governments under the Presidential plan of recog- 
nition, and many had begun to draft repressive legislation 
against the freedmen. The Radicals, wishing not only to 
block the admission of these states, but also to bring about 
the creation of entirely new governments based on uni- 
versal Negro suffrage, cast about for delaying tactics. On 
the very first day of the new Congress, Thaddeus Stevens 
offered a resolution establishing a Joint Committee of 
Fifteen on Reconstruction, nine from the House and six 
from the Senate, to study the condition of the Southern 
states and report on their readiness for admission. The 
following day, December 5, 1865, President Johnsons 
message, prepared with the aid of historian George Ban- 
croft, was read to Congress. This moderate, judicious 
message, conveying much of the spirit of Lincoln's Sec- 
ond Inaugural, was well received throughout the nation, 
though as might have been expected, its very moderation 
antagonized the Radicals. On December 18, Stevens, in 
his answer to the President, fired the opening gun in the 
Radical attack. Stevens adduced evidence in support of 
his "conquered provinces" theory, bluntly denied presi- 
dential authority to determine the conditions of readmis- 
sion, and closed with a passionate defense of the rights of 
the freedmen in the South. 

Administration forces, not wishing Stevens' speech to 
go unanswered during the Christmas recess scheduled to 



202 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FEDERAL UNION 

begin on December 21, chose Mr. Henry ]. Raymond, a 
newcomer to Congress, but nationally known as a gifted 
speaker and writer, to make the reply. 1 Unfortunately 
for administration supporters on the Republican side, Mr. 
Raymond was preceded on December 21 by a Democratic 
spokesman, Mr. Finck of Ohio, whose endorsement of 
President Johnson's position was regarded at the moment 
as being more of a liability than an asset. Raymond, seek- 
ing Republican support, and embarrassed by this unwel- 
come assistance from the opposition party, directed his 
opening remarks to Finck, noting caustically that such 
support had been a little late in coming and observing 
that had it come earlier the nation "might have been 
spared some years of war, some millions of money and 
rivers of blood and tears." Having delivered this sharp 
rebuke to the Democrats, Raymond proceeded to rebut 
Stevens' argument and to defend the policies of the 
administration. He closed his speech with a moving ap- 
peal for allaying, rather than stimulating, existent hatreds 
and animosities. 

Thus began the Congressional debate on reconstruc- 
tion, which proved to be one of the longest and bitterest 
in American political history. The advocates of modera- 
tion soon found themselves fighting a losing battle. In 
1866 the Radicals won the Congressional elections and 
gained control of reconstruction, despite the strenuous 
speaking tour of President Johnson in behalf of his 
policies. Henry Raymond, Johnson's champion in the 
House, admitting his personal failure to rally administra- 
tion support, refused renomination and retired after one 
term. On March 2, 1867, the First Reconstruction Act, 
placing the former Confederate states under military rule, 
was passed over the President's veto. The effect of this 
act was to declare "provisional" all state governments set 

1 James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress (Norwich, Con- 
necticut: Henry Bill Publishing Company, 1886), II, pp. 130- 
132. 



RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FEDERAL UNION 203 

up under the presidential flan and ultimately to replace 
them with new governments established on the basis of 
universal Negro suffrage. Only after Congressional ap- 
proval of these newly organized governments were the 
military governments to he removed, the states' Senators 
and Representatives to he admitted to Congress, and the 
states themselves to he readmitted to the Union. Not sat- 
isfied with this victory, the Radicals sought to destroy the 
President himself. In February, 1868, Johnson was 
charged with violating the Tenure of Office Act which 
had been passed expressly to tie his hands, and impeach- 
ment proceedings were brought against him. In the en- 
suing trial, in which the members of the Senate sat as his 
jury, the President was saved by a single vote from being 
removed from office, and was allowed to serve the few 
remaining months of his term. 

By 1870 all ten states placed under military control in 
1867 had adopted new constitutions in conventions domi- 
nated -by carpetbaggers, Negroes, and scalawags. The 
Radicals had succeeded in wiping out the old Southern 
planter class, although Southern whites soon managed to 
overthrow carpetbag government and regain control over 
the Negro. The Radicals also managed to establish Re- 
publican domination over national politics, and were not 
seriously challenged until 1871, when insurgents in Re- 
publican ranks joined with Democrats in protesting politi- 
cal corruption and punitive reconstruction measures. Not 
until 1885 were the Democrats able again to place a 
candidate in the White House. 



Radical Republican Theory 

THADDEUS STEVENS 



Born, Danville, Vermont, April 4, 1792; died, Washing- 
ton, D.C., August 11, 1868. Graduated from Dartmouth, 
1 814. Studied law, took bar examination in Maryland, 
and moved to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to begin practice. 
Entered politics as an anti-Mason. Member of Pennsyl- 
vania legislature, 1833-1841. Here, as a strong and able 
advocate of free public schools, he made what was prob- 
ably the outstanding contribution of his long political 
career. In 1842 he moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 
Defended fugitive slaves without fee. Member of United 
States House of Representatives, 1849-1853, 1858-1868. 
Chairman of Ways and Means Committee. A leader of 
the Radical Republicans during Reconstruction, he intro- 
duced a resolution for the impeachment of President 
Johnson and served as one of the impeachment managers. 
Stevens is recognized as one of our most brilliant parlia- 
mentarians. Intelligent, well-read, a master of language, 
wielder of a merciless sarcasm, he was almost invincible 
in debate. 



A candid examination of the power and proper prin- 
l\. ciples of reconstruction can be offensive to no one, 
and may possibly be profitable by exciting inquiry. One of the suggestions of 
the message which we are now considering has special reference to this. Per- 
haps it is the principle most interesting to the people at this time. The Presi- 
dent assumes, what no one doubts, that the late rebel States have lost their 

United States House of Representatives, December 18, 1865. Congressional Globe, 
39th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. I, pp. 72-75. 

204 



THADDEUS STEVENS 205 

constitutional relations to the Union, and are incapable of representation in 
Congress, except by permission of the Government. It matters but little, with 
this admission, whether you call them States out of the Union, and now con- 
quered territories, or assert that because the Constitution forbids them to do 
what they did do, that they are therefore only dead as to all national and 
political action, and will remain so until the Government shall breathe into 
them the breath of life anew and permit them to occupy their former position. 
In other words, that they are not out of the Union, but are only dead 
carcasses lying within the Union. In either case, it is very plain that it re- 
quires the action of Congress to enable them to form a State government and 
send representatives to Congress. Nobody, I believe, pretends that with their 
old constitutions and frames of government they can be permitted to claim 
their old rights under the Constitution. They have torn their constitutional 
States into atoms, and built on their foundations fabrics of a totally different 
character. Dead men cannot raise themselves. Dead States cannot restore their 
own existence "as it was." Whose especial duty is it to do it? In whom does the 
Constitution place the power? Not in the judicial branch of Government, for 
it only adjudicates and does not prescribe laws. Not in the Executive, for he 
only executes and cannot make laws. Not in the Commander-in-Chief of the 
armies, for he can only hold them under military rule until the sovereign leg- 
islative power of the conqueror shall give them law. 

There is fortunately no difficulty in solving the question. There are two 
provisions in the Constitution, under one of which the case must fall. The 
fourth article says: 

"New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union." 

In my judgment this is the controlling provision in this case. Unless the 
law of nations is a dead letter, the late war between two acknowledged bel- 
ligerents severed their original compacts, and broke all the ties that bound 
them together. The future condition of the conquered power depends on the 
will of the conqueror. They must come in as new States or remain as con- 
quered provinces. Congress— the Senate and House of Representatives, with 
the concurrence of the President— is the only power that can act in the matter. 
But suppose, as some dreaming theorists imagine, that these States have never 
been out of the Union, but have only destroyed their State governments so as 
to be incapable of political action; then the fourth section of the fourth article 
applies, which says: 

"The United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican 
form of government." 

Who is the United States? Not the judiciary; not the President; but the 
sovereign power of the people, exercised through their representatives in 
Congress, with the concurrence of the Executive. It means the political Gov- 
ernment—the concurrent action of both branches of Congress and the Execu- 



206 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FEDERAL UNION 

tive. The separate action of each amounts to nothing, either in admitting new 
States or guarantying republican governments to lapsed or outlawed States. 
Whence springs the preposterous idea that either the President, or the Senate, 
or the House of Representatives, acting separately, can determine the right 
of States to send members or Senators to the Congress of the Union:* 

To prove that they are and for four years have been out of the Union for all 
legal purposes, and being now conquered, subject to the absolute disposal of 
Congress, I will suggest a few ideas and adduce a few authorities. If the so 
called "confederate States of America" were an independent belligerent, and 
were so acknowledged by the United States and by Europe, or had assumed 
and maintained an attitude which entitled them to be considered and treated 
as a belligerent, then, during such time, they were precisely in the condition 
of a foreign nation with whom we were at war; nor need their independence as 
a nation be acknowledged by us to produce that effect. . . . 

[Mr. Stevens quotes several legal authorities to support his position that all 
legal bonds between the Federal Government and the seceding states were 
broken by the act of war and the recognition of these states as belligerents.] 

After such clear and repeated decisions it is something worse than ridicu- 
lous to hear men of respectable standing attempting to nullify the law of 
nations, and declare the Supreme Court of the United States in error, be- 
cause, as the Constitution forbids it, the States could not go out of the Union 
in fact. A respectable gentleman was lately reciting this argument, when he 
suddenly stopped and said, "Did you hear of that atrocious murder committed 
in our town? A rebel deliberately murdered a Government official." The 
person addressed said, "I think you are mistaken." "How so? I saw it myself." 
"You are wrong, no murder was or could be committed, for the law forbids it." 

The theory that the rebel States, for four years a separate power and with- 
out representation in Congress, were all the time here in the Union, is a good 
deal less ingenious and respectable than the metaphysics of Berkeley, which 
proved that neither the world nor any human being was in existence. If this 
theory were simply ridiculous it could be forgiven; but its effect is deeply 
injurious to the stability of the nation. I cannot doubt that the late confederate 
States are out of the Union to all intents and purposes for which the con- 
queror may choose so to consider them. 

But on the ground of estoppel, the United States have the clear right to 
elect to adjudge them out of the Union. They are estopped both by matter of 
record and matter in fais. One of the first resolutions passed by seceded South 
Carolina in January, 1 86 1, is as follows: 

Resolved, unanimously, That the separation of South Carolina from the 
Federal Union is final, and she has no further interest in the Constitution of 
the United States; and that the only appropriate negotiations between her and 
the Federal Government are as to their mutual relations as foreign States. 



THADDEUS STEVENS 207 

Similar resolutions appear upon all their State and confederate government 
records. The speeches of their members of congress, their generals and execu- 
tive officers, and the answers of their government to our shameful sueings for 
peace, went upon the defiant ground that no terms would be offered or re- 
ceived except upon the prior acknowledgment of the entire and permanent 
independence of the confederate States. After this, to deny that we have a 
right to treat them as a conquered belligerent, severed from the Union in fact, 
is not argument but mockery. Whether it be our interest to do so is the only 
question hereafter and more deliberately to be considered. 

But suppose these powerful but now subdued belligerents, instead of being 
out of the Union, are merely destroyed, and are now lying about, a dead 
corpse, or with animation so suspended as to be incapable of action, and 
wholly unable to heal themselves by any unaided movements of their own. 
Then they may fall under the provision of the Constitution which says "the 
United States shall guaranty to every State in the Union a republican form of 
government." Under that power can the judiciary, or the President, or the 
Commander-in-Chief of the Army, or the Senate or House of Representatives, 
acting separately, restore them to life and readmit them into the Union? I 
insist that if each acted separately, though the action of each was identical 
with all the others, it would amount to nothing. Nothing but the joint action 
of the two Houses of Congress and the concurrence of the President could do 
it. If the Senate admitted their Senators, and the House their members, it 
would have no effect on the future action of Congress. The Fortieth Congress 
might reject both. Such is the ragged record of Congress for the last four 
years. . . . 

Congress alone can do it. But Congress does not mean the Senate or the 
House of Representatives, and President, all acting severally. Their joint 
action constitutes Congress. Hence a law of Congress must be passed before 
any new State can be admitted; or any dead ones revived. Until then no 
member can be lawfully admitted into either House. Hence it appears with 
how little knowledge of constitutional law each branch is urged to admit 
members separately from these destroyed States. The provision that "each 
House shall be the judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its own 
members/' has not the most distant bearing on this question. Congress must 
create States and declare when they are entitled to be represented. Then 
each House must judge whether the members presenting themselves from 
a recognized State possess the requisite qualifications of age, residence, and 
citizenship; and whether the election and returns are according to law. The 
Houses, separately, can judge of nothing else. It seems amazing that any 
man of legal education could give it any larger meaning. 

It is obvious from all this that the first duty of Congress is to pass a 
law declaring the condition of these outside or defunct States, and providing 



208 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FEDERAL UNION 

proper civil governments for them. Since the conquest they have been 
governed by martial law. Military rule is necessarily despotic, and ought 
not to exist longer than is absolutely necessary. As there are no symptoms 
that the people of these provinces will be prepared to participate in con- 
stitutional government for some years, I know of no arrangement so proper 
for them as territorial governments. There they can learn the principles of 
freedom and eat the fruit of foul rebellion. Under such governments, 
while electing members to the Territorial Legislatures, they will neces- 
sarily mingle with those to whom Congress shall extend the right of suffrage. 
In Territories Congress fixes the qualifications of electors; and I know of 
no better place nor better occasion for the conquered rebels and the con- 
queror to practice justice to all men, and accustom themselves to make and 
to obey equal laws. 

As these fallen rebels cannot at their option reenter the heaven which they 
have disturbed, the garden of Eden which they have deserted, and flaming 
swords are set at the gates to secure their exclusion, it becomes important 
to the welfare of the nation to inquire when the doors shall be reopened for 
their admission. 

According to my judgment they ought never to be recognized as capable 
of acting in the Union, or of being counted as valid States, until the 
Constitution shall have been so amended as to make it what its framers 
intended; and so as to secure perpetual ascendency to the party of the 
Union; and so as to render our republican Government firm and stable 
forever. The first of those amendments is to change the basis of repre- 
sentation among the States from Federal numbers to actual voters. Now all 
the colored freemen in the slave States, and three-fifths of the slaves, are 
represented, though none of them have votes. The States have nineteen 
representatives of colored slaves. If the slaves are now free then they can 
add, for the other two-fifths, thirteen more, making the slave representation 
thirty-two. I suppose the free blacks in those States will give at least five more, 
making the representation of non-voting people of color about thirty-seven. 
The whole number of representatives now from the slave States is seventy. 
Add the other two-fifths and it will be eighty-three. 

If the amendment prevails, and those States withhold the right of suffrage 
from persons of color, it will deduct about thirty-seven, leaving them but 
forty-six. With the basis unchanged, the eighty-three southern members, 
with the Democrats that will in the best times be elected from the North, 
will always give them a majority in Congress and in the Electoral College. 
They will at the very first election take possession of the White House and 
the halls of Congress. I need not depict the ruin that would follow. As- 
sumption of the rebel debt or repudiation of the Federal debt would be sure 
to follow. The oppression of the freedmen; the reamendment of their State 



THADDEUS STEVENS 20O, 

constitutions, and the reestablishment of slavery would be the inevitable 
result. That they would scorn and disregard their present constitutions, 
forced upon them in the midst of martial law, would be both natural and 
just. No one who has any regard for freedom of elections can look upon 
those governments, forced upon them in duress, with any favor. If they 
should grant the right of suffrage to persons of color, I think there would 
always be Union white men enough in the South, aided by the blacks, 
to divide the representation, and thus continue the Republican ascendency. 
If they should refuse to thus alter their election laws it would reduce the 
representatives of the late slave States to about forty-five and render them 
powerless for evil. 

It is plain that this amendment must be consummated before the defunct 
States are admitted to be capable of State action, or it never can be. 

The proposed amendment to allow Congress to lay a duty on exports is 
precisely in the same situation. Its importance cannot well be overstated. 
It is very obvious that for many years the South will not pay much under 
our internal revenue laws. The only article on which we can raise any 
considerable amount is cotton. It will be grown largely at once. With ten 
cents a pound export duty it would be furnished cheaper to foreign markets 
than they could obtain it from any other part of the world. The late war 
has shown that. Two million bales exported, at five hundred pounds to the 
bale, would yield $100,000,000. This seems to be the chief revenue we 
shall ever derive from the South. Besides, it would be a protection to that 
amount to our domestic manufactures. Other proposed amendments— to 
make all laws uniform; to prohibit the assumption of the rebel debt— are of 
vital importance, and the only thing that can prevent the combined forces 
of copperheads and secessionists from legislating against the interests of 
the Union whenever they may obtain an accidental majority. 

But this is not all that we ought to do before these inveterate rebels 
are invited to participate in our legislation. We have turned, or are about 
to turn, loose four million slaves without a hut to shelter them or a 
cent in their pockets. The infernal laws of slavery have prevented them 
from acquiring an education, understanding the commonest laws of con- 
tract, or of managing the ordinary business of life. This Congress is bound 
to provide for them until they can take care of themselves. If we do not 
furnish them with homesteads, and hedge them around with protective 
laws; if we leave them to the legislation of their late masters, we had better 
have left them in bondage. Their condition would be worse than that of 
our prisoners at Andersonville. If we fail in this great duty now, when we 
have the power, we shall deserve and receive the execration of history and 
of all future ages. 

Two things are of vital importance. 



2IO RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FEDERAL UNION 

i. So to establish a principle that none of the rebel States shall be 
counted in any of the amendments of the Constitution until they are duly 
admitted into the family of States by the law-making power of their con- 
queror. For more than six months the amendment of the Constitution 
abolishing slavery has been ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of 
the States that acted on its passage by Congress, and which had Legislatures, 
or which were States capable of acting, or required to act, on the question. 

I take no account of the aggregation of whitewashed rebels, who without 
any legal authority have assembled in the capitals of the late rebel States 
and simulated legislative bodies. Nor do I regard with any respect the 
cunning byplay into which they deluded the Secretary of State by frequent 
telegraphic announcements that "South Carolina had adopted the amend- 
ment;" "Alabama has adopted the amendment, being the twenty-seventh 
State," &c. This was intended to delude the people, and accustom Congress 
to hear repeated the names of these extinct States as if they were alive; 
when, in truth, they have now no more existence than the revolted cities 
of Latium, two-thirds of whose people were colonized and their property 
confiscated, and their right of citizenship withdrawn by conquering and 
avenging Rome. 

2. It is equally important to the stability of this Republic that it should 
now be solemnly decided what power can revive, recreate, and reinstate 
these provinces into the family of States, and invest them with the rights 
of American citizens. It is time that Congress should assert its sovereignty, 
and assume something of the dignity of a Roman senate. It is fortunate 
that the President invites Congress to take this manly attitude. After stating 
with great frankness in his able message his theory, which, however, is 
found to be impracticable, and which I believe very few now consider 
tenable, he refers the whole matter to the judgment of Congress. If Con- 
gress should fail firmly and wisely to discharge that high duty it is not 
the fault of the President. 

This Congress owes it to its own character to set the seal of reprobation 
upon a doctrine which is becoming too fashionable, and unless rebuked 
will be the recognized principle of our Government. Governor Perry and 
other provisional governors and orators proclaim that "this is the white 
man's Government." The whole copperhead party, pandering to the lowest 
prejudices of the ignorant, repeat the cuckoo cry, "This is the white man's 
Government." Demagogues of all parties, even some high in authority, 
gravely shout, "This is the white man's Government." What is implied by 
this? That one race of men are to have the exclusive right forever to rule 
this nation, and to exercise all acts of sovereignty, while all other races and 
nations and colors are to be their subjects, and have no voice in making 
the laws and choosing the rulers by whom they are to be governed. Wherein 



THADDEUS STEVENS 211 

does this differ from slavery except in degree? Does not this contradict all 
the distinctive principles of the Declaration of Independence? When the 
great and good men promulgated that instrument, and pledged their lives 
and sacred honors to defend it, it was supposed to form an epoch in civil 
government. Before that time it was held that the right to rule was vested 
in families, dynasties, or races, not because of superior intelligence or virtue, 
but because of a divine right to enjoy exclusive privileges. 

Our fathers repudiated the whole doctrine of the legal superiority of fami- 
lies or races, and proclaimed the equality of men before the law. Upon that 
they created a revolution and built the Republic. They were prevented 
by slavery from perfecting the superstructure whose foundation they had 
thus broadly laid. For the sake of the Union they consented to wait, but 
never relinquished the idea of its final completion. The time to which they 
looked forward with anxiety has come. It is our duty to complete their 
work. If this Republic is not now made to stand on their great principles, 
it has no honest foundation, and the Father of all men will still shake it to 
its center. If we have not yet been sufficiently scourged for our national 
sin to teach us to do justice to all God's creatures, without distinction of 
race or color, we must expect the still more heavy vengeance of an offended 
Father, still increasing his inflictions as he increased the severity of the 
plagues of Egypt until the tyrant consented to do justice. And when that 
tyrant repented of his reluctant consent, and attempted to reenslave the 
people, as our southern tyrants are attempting to do now, he filled the Red 
sea with broken chariots and drowned horses, and strewed the shores with 
dead carcasses. 

Mr. Chairman, I trust the Republican party will not be alarmed at what I 
am saying. I do not profess to speak their sentiments, nor must they be held 
responsible for them. I speak for myself, and take the responsibility, and will 
settle with my intelligent constituents. 

This is not a "white man's Government," in the exclusive sense in which 
it is used. To say so is political blasphemy, for it violates the fundamental 
principles of our gospel of liberty. This is man's Government; the Govern- 
ment of all men alike; not that all men will have equal power and sway 
within it. Accidental circumstances, natural and acquired endowment and 
ability, will vary their fortunes. But equal rights to all the privileges of the 
Government is innate in every immortal being, no matter what the shape 
or color of the tabernacle which it inhabits. 

If equal privileges were granted to all, I should not expect any but white 
men to be elected to office for long ages to come. The prejudice engendered 
by slavery would not soon permit merit to be preferred to color. But it 
would still be beneficial to the weaker races. In a country where political 
divisions will always exist, their power, joined with just white men, would 



212 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FEDERAL UNION 

greatly modify, if it did not entirely prevent, the injustice of majorities. 
Without the right of suffrage in the late slave States, (I do not speak of the 
free States,) I believe the slaves had far better been left in bondage. I see 
it stated that very distinguished advocates of the right of suffrage lately 
declared in this city that they do not expect to obtain it by congressional 
legislation, but only by administrative action, because, as one gallant gentle- 
man said, the States had not been out of the Union. Then they will never 
get it. The President is far sounder than they. He sees that administrative 
action has nothing to do with it. If it ever is to come, it must be constitutional 
amendments or congressional action in the Territories, and in enabling acts. 

How shameful that men of influence should mislead and miseducate the 
public mind! They proclaim, "This is the white man's Government," and 
the whole coil of copperheads echo the same sentiment, and upstart, jealous 
Republicans join the cry. Is it any wonder ignorant foreigners and illiterate 
natives should learn this doctrine, and be led to despise and maltreat a 
whole race of their fellow-men? 

Sir, this doctrine of a white man's Government is as atrocious as the 
infamous sentiment that damned the late Chief Justice to everlasting fame; 
and, I fear, to everlasting fire. 



Administration Theory 
HENRY JARVIS RAYMOND 



Born, Lima, New York, January 24, 1820; died, New 
York City, June 18, 1869. Graduated from University 
of Vermont. Soon gained a wide refutation as a news- 
paperman and public speaker, Elected in 1849 to New 
York State Assembly; reelected, became Speaker in 1851. 
In this year he and his friend George Jones established 
the New York Daily Times. Lieutenant Governor of 
New York from 1855 t0 I $57' ^ n l %$6 ^ e participated 
in the founding of the Republican party and drafted its 
statement of principles. For his efforts in the campaign 
of 1864 (he helped write the platform and was instru- 
mental in obtaining the Vice-Presidential nomination for 
Andrew Johnson) he was rewarded with the Chair- 
manship of the Republican National Committee. Elected 
to Congress in 1865, he entered the House with unusual 
prestige for a newcomer and immediately became spokes- 
man for the administration. But he proved no match for 
Stevens, and Raymond's career in national politics was 
tragic and short. He was expelled from the National 
Committee and retired from the House after a single 
term. In 1869, apparently only at the beginning of his 
career, he died at the age of 49 of a cerebral hemorrhage 
brought on by emotional strain and overwork. Charming, 
urbane, eloquent, Raymond sought to sound a note of 
moderation and conciliation in a time of inflamed pas- 
sions. Elmer Davis has said of his political career that 
his misfortune was "that he was a temperamental non- 
partisan incurably addicted to party politics." 

United States House of Representatives, December 21, 1865. Congressional Globe, 
39th Cong., 1 st Sess., pt. I, pp. 120-125. 



213 



214 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FEDERAL UNION 



M 



r. Chairman: I should be glad, if it meet the sense 
of those members who are present, to make some 
remarks upon the general question now before the House; but I do not 
wish to trespass at all upon their disposition in regard to this matter. I do 
not know, however, that there will be a better opportunity to say what 
little I have to say than is now offered; and if the House shall indicate no 
other wish, I will proceed to say it. ... I am glad to assume and to believe 
that there is not a member of this House, nor a man in this country, 
who does not wish, from the bottom of his heart, to see the day speedily 
come when we shall have this nation— the great American Republic— again 
united, more harmonious in its action than it has ever been, and forever 
one and indivisible. We in this Congress are to devise the means to restore 
its union and its harmony, to perfect its institutions, and to make it in all 
its parts and in all its action, through all time to come, too strong, too wise, and 
too free ever to invite or ever to permit the hand of rebellion again to be raised 
against it. 

Now sir, in devising those ways and means to accomplish that great 
result, the first thing we have to do is to know the point from which we 
start, to understand the nature of the material with which we have to work- 
trie condition of the territory and the States with which we are concerned. 
I had supposed at the outset of this session that it was the purpose of this 
House to proceed to that work without discussion, and to commit it 
almost exclusively, if not entirely, to the joint committee raised by the two 
Houses for the consideration of that subject. But, sir, I must say that I was 
glad when I perceived the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Stevens], himself the chairman on the part of this House of that great com- 
mittee on reconstruction, lead off in a discussion of this general subject, and 
thus invite all the rest of us who choose to follow him in the debate. In 
the remarks which he made in this body a few days since, he laid down, 
with the clearness and the force which characterize everything he says and 
does, his point of departure in commencing this great work. I had hoped 
that the ground he would lay down would be such that we could all of 
us stand upon it and cooperate with him in our common object. I feel 
constrained to say, sir— and I do it without the slightest disposition to create 
or to exaggerate differences— that there were features in his exposition of 
the condition of the country with which I cannot concur. I cannot for 
myself start from precisely the point which he assumes. 

In his remarks on that occasion he assumed that the States lately in re- 
bellion were and are out of the Union. Throughout his speech— I will not 
trouble you with reading passages from it— I find him speaking of those 
States as "outside of the Union," as "dead States," as having forfeited all 
their rights and terminated their State existence. I find expressions still 



HENRY JARVIS RAYMOND 21 5 

more definite and distinct; I find him stating that they "are and for four 
years have been out of the Union for all legal purposes;" as having been for 
four years a "separate power," and "a separate nation." 

His position therefore is that these States, having been in rebellion, are 
now out of the Union, and are simply within the jurisdiction of the Consti- 
tution of the United States as so much territory to be dealt with precisely 
as the will of the conqueror, to use his own language, may dictate. Now, 
sir, if that position is correct, it prescribes for us one line of policy to be 
pursued very different from the one that will be proper if it is not correct. 
His belief is that what we have to do is to create new States out of this 
territory at the proper time— many years distant— retaining them meantime 
in a territorial condition, and subjecting them to precisely such a state of 
discipline and tutelage as Congress or the Government of the United 
States may see fit to prescribe. If I believed in the premises which he 
assumes, possibly, though I do not think probably, I might agree with the 
conclusion he has reached. 

But, sir, I cannot believe that this is our condition. I cannot believe 
that these States have ever been out of the Union, or that they are now out 
of the Union. I cannot believe that they ever have been, or are now, in any 
sense a separate Power. If they were, sir, how and when did they become 
so? They were once States of this Union— that every one concedes; bound 
to the Union and made members of the Union by the Constitution of the 
United States. If they ever went out of the Union it was at some specific 
time and by some specific act. I regret that the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
[Mr. Stevens] is not now in his seat. I should have been glad to ask him 
by what specific act, and at what precise time, any one of those States took 
itself out of the American Union. Was it by the ordinance of secession? 
I think we all agree that an ordinance of secession passed by any State of 
this Union is simply a nullity, because it encounters in its practical opera- 
tion the Constitution of the United States, which is the supreme law of 
the land. It could have no legal, actual force or validity. It could not operate 
to effect any actual change in the relations of the State adopting it to the 
national Government, still less to accomplish the removal of that State from 
the sovereign jurisdiction of the Constitution of the United States. 

Well, sir, did the resolutions of these States, the declarations of their 
officials, the speeches of members of their Legislatures, or the utterances 
of their press accomplish the result? Certainly not. They could not possibly 
work any change whatever in the relations of these States to the General 
Government. All their ordinances and all their resolutions were simply 
declarations of a purpose to secede. Their secession, if it ever took place, 
certainly could not date from the time when their intention to secede was 
first announced. After declaring that intention, they proceeded to carry it 



2l6 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FEDERAL UNION 

into effect. How? By war. By sustaining their purpose by arms against the 
force which the United States brought to bear against it. Did they sustain 
it? Were their arms victorious? If they were, then their secession was an 
accomplished fact. If not, it was nothing more than an abortive attempt— a 
purpose unfulfilled. This, then, is simply a question of fact, and we all 
know what the fact is. They did not succeed. They failed to maintain their 
ground by force of arms— in other words, they failed to secede. 

But the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] insists that they 
did secede, and that this fact is not in the least affected by the other fact 
that the Constitution forbids secession. He says that the law forbids murder, 
but that murders are nevertheless committed. But there is no analogy be- 
tween the two cases. If secession had been accomplished, if these States 
had gone out, and overcome the armies that tried to prevent their going 
out, then the prohibition of the Constitution could not have altered the 
fact. In the case of murder the man is killed, and murder is thus committed 
in spite of the law. The fact of killing is essential to the committal of the 
crime; and the fact of going out is essential to secession. But in this case 
there was no such fact. I think I need not argue any further the position 
that the rebel States have never for one moment, by any ordinances of 
secession, or by any successful war, carried themselves beyond the rightful 
jurisdiction of the Constitution of the United States. They have interrupted 
for a time the practical enforcement and exercise of that jurisdiction; they 
rendered it impossible for a time for this Government to enforce obedience 
to its laws; but there has never been an hour when this Government, or 
this Congress, or this House, or the gentleman from Pennsylvania himself, 
ever conceded that those States were beyond the jurisdiction of the Consti- 
tution and laws of the United States. 

During all these four years of war Congress has been making laws for 
the government of those very States, and the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
has voted for them, and voted to raise armies to enforce them. Why was 
this done if they were a separate nation? Why, if they were not part of 
the United States? Those laws were made for them as States. Members have 
voted for laws imposing upon them direct taxes, which are apportioned, 
according to the Constitution, only "among the several States" according to 
their population. In a variety of ways— to some of which the gentleman 
who preceded me has referred— this Congress has by its action assumed 
and asserted that they were still States in the Union, though in rebellion, 
and that it was with the rebellion that we were making war, and not with 
the States themselves as States, and still less as a separate, as a foreign, 
Power. 



HENRY JARVIS RAYMOND 217 

The gentleman from Pennylvania [Mr. Stevens] spoke of States forfeiting 
their State existence by the fact of rebellion. Well, I do not see how there 
can be any such forfeiture involved or implied. The individual citizens of 
those States went into the rebellion. They thereby incurred certain penalties 
under the laws and Constitution of the United States. What the States did 
was to endeavor to interpose their State authority between the individuals 
in rebellion and the Government of the United States, which assumed, and 
which would carry out the assumption, to declare those individuals traitors 
for their acts. The individuals in the States who were in rebellion, it 
seems to me, were the only parties who under the Constitution and laws 
of the United States could incur the penalties of treason. I know of no law, 
I know of nothing in the Constitution of the United States, I know of 
nothing in any recognized or established code of international law, which 
can punish a State as a State for any act it may perform. It is certain that 
our Constitution assumes nothing of the kind. It does not deal with States, 
except in one or two instances, such as elections of members of Congress, 
and the election of electors of President and Vice President. 

Indeed, the main feature which distinguishes the Union under the 
Constitution from the old Confederation is this, that whereas the old Con- 
federation did deal with States directly, making requisitions upon them for 
supplies and relying upon them for the execution of its laws, the Constitution 
of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, made its laws 
binding on the individual citizens of the several States, whether living in 
one State or in another. Congress, as the legislative branch of this Govern- 
ment, enacts a law which shall be operative upon every individual within 
its jurisdiction. It is binding upon each individual citizen, and if he resists 
it by force he is guilty of a crime and is punished accordingly, anything in 
the constitution or laws of his State to the contrary notwithstanding. But 
the States themselves are not touched by the laws of the United States or 
by the Constitution of the United States. A State cannot be indicted; a 
State cannot be tried; a State cannot be hung for treason. The individuals 
in a State may be so tried and hung, but the State as an organization, as 
an organic member of the Union, still exists, whether its individual citizens 
commit treason or not. 



Mr. Chairman, I am here to act with those who seek to complete the 
restoration of the Union, as I have acted with those through the last four 
years who have sought to maintain its integrity and prevent its destruction. I 
shall say no word and do no act and give no vote to recognize its division, or 
to postpone or disturb its rapidly-approaching harmony and peace. I have no 
right and no disposition to lay down rules by which others shall govern and 



2l8 RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FEDERAL UNION 

guide their conduct; but for myself I shall endeavor to act upon this whole 
question in the broad and liberal temper which its importance demands. We 
are not conducting a controversy in a court of law. We are not seeking to 
enforce a remedy for private wrongs, nor to revenge or retaliate private griefs. 
We have great communities of men, permanent interests of great States, to 
deal with, and we are bound to deal with them in a large and liberal spirit. 
It may be for the welfare of this nation that we shall cherish toward the 
millions of our people lately in rebellion feelings of hatred and distrust; that 
we shall nurse the bitterness their infamous treason has naturally and justly 
engendered, and make that the basis of our future dealings with them. Pos- 
sibly we may best teach them the lessons of liberty, by visiting upon them 
the worst excesses of despotism. Possibly they may best learn to practice justice 
toward others, to admire and emulate our republican institutions, by suffering 
at our hands the absolute rule we denounce in others. It may be best for us 
and for them that we discard, in all our dealings with them, all the obligations 
and requirements of the Constitution, and assert as the only law for them the 
unrestrained will of conquerors and masters. 

I confess I do not sympathize with the sentiments or the opinions which 
would dictate such a course. I would exact of them all needed and all just 
guarantees for their future loyalty to the Constitution and laws of the United 
States. I would exact from them, or impose upon them through the constitu- 
tional legislation of Congress, and by enlarging and extending, if necessary, 
the scope and powers of the Freedmen's Bureau, proper care and protection 
for the helpless and friendless freedmen, so lately their slaves. I would exercise 
a rigid scrutiny into the character and loyalty of the men whom they may 
send to Congress, before I allowed them to participate in the high prerogative 
of legislating for the nation. But I would seek to allay rather than stimulate 
the animosities and hatred, however just they may be, to which the war has 
given rise. But for our own sake as well as for theirs I would not visit upon 
them a policy of confiscation which has been discarded in the policy and 
practical conduct of every civilized nation on the face of the globe. 

I believe it important for us as well as for them that we should cultivate 
friendly relations with them, that we should seek the promotion of their 
interests as part and parcel of our own. We have been their enemies in war, 
in peace let us show ourselves their friends. Now that slavery has been 
destroyed— that prolific source of all our alienations, all our hatreds, and all 
our disasters— there is nothing longer to make us foes. They have the same 
interests, the same hopes, the same aspirations that we have. They are one 
with us; we must share their sufferings and they will share our advancing 
prosperity. They have been punished as no community was ever punished 
before for the treason they have committed. I trust, sir, the day will come ere 
long when all traces of this great conflict will be effaced, except those which 
mark the blessings that follow in its train. 



HENRY JARVIS RAYMOND 219 

I hope and believe we shall soon see the day when the people of the south- 
ern States will show us, by evidences that we cannot mistake, that they have 
returned, in all sincerity and good faith, to their allegiance to the Union; that 
they intend to join henceforth with us in promoting its prosperity, in defend- 
ing the banner of its glory, and in fighting the battles of democratic freedom, 
not only here, but wherever the issue may be forced upon our acceptance. I 
rejoice with heartfelt satisfaction that we have in these seats of power— in the 
executive department and in these halls of Congress— men who will cooperate 
for the attainment of these great and beneficent ends. I trust they will act with 
wisdom; I know they will act from no other motives than those of patriotism 
and love of their fellow-men. 



PART TWO 



Ferment in an Industrial Age 



RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND 

SOCIAL PROTEST 



After the Civil War, America burst its seams with raw 
energy and desire. Railroads spanned and cross-hatched 
the continent, carrying settlers westward and returning 
the produce of their lands to big city markets. Immigrants 
came in waves to take up the new lands and to swell the 
labor force in sprawling cities. Smokestacks towering 
against the sky symbolized economic empires that reached 
into the Menominee, Gogebic, and Mesabi ranges for ore 
and into Europe and the Orient for markets. By 1900 
America had been transformed from a parochial society 
into one that was corporate, impersonal, and international. 

The American industrial revolution changed the mind 
as well as the face of the nation. Although the outward 
changes were impressive, industrial progress was not ac- 
companied by widely shared social and economic gains. 
Rapacity made a mockery of older political and social 
values. Plutocratic America revised its inherited credo of 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to read life and 
liberty for the pursuit of wealth. The new loyalty was to 
"the bitch goddess Success" who presided callously over 
"the great barbecue." Standards of human worth were 
fashioned out of economic virtues; to lose out in the eco- 
nomic race was counted a defect in character. 

The big change was sanctioned by a book, or more ac- 
curately, by its interpreters. In his The Origin of Species 
(1859), Charles Darwin offered a biological theory of 

223 



224 RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 

organic evolution based on natural selection. A fellow 
Englishman, Herbert Spencer, appropriated Darwin's 
leading ideas to explain conditions under which social 
progress occurs. Spencer's doctrine of Social Darwinism, 
coupled with laissez-faire economics, furnished the out- 
lines of the prevailing belief system of his generation. The 
catchwords "struggle for existence" and "survival of the 
fittest" fixed in popular imagination a kinship between 
the natural and social worlds. Above all, Spencer gave 
sanction to strenuosity and economic ruthlessness. Re- 
wards came legitimately to those who hacked their way 
through the competitive jungle; laggards and drop-outs 
were the inevitable price of social progress. 

Spencer was lionized when he came to the United 
States in 1882. Two hundred men of prominence and 
large affairs threw a banquet in his honor at Delmonico's. 
Anticipating the speech he must make, Spencer was al- 
most at the point of nervous collapse, and he squirmed 
painfully under round after round of unrestrained testi- 
monials. Exclaimed Henry Ward Beecher: "To my father 
and my mother 1 owe my physical being; to you, sir, I 
owe my intellectual being. At a critical moment you pro- 
vided the safe paths through bogs and morasses; you were 
my teacher." 1 William Graham Sumner was among those 
present, and while incapable of Beecher's effusions, he 
did add his "amen." And well he might, for among all of 
Spencer's disciples, Sumner was America's most vigorous 
and influential Social Darwinist. 

Sumner was a clergyman who shed the cloth to become 
Professor of Political Economy at Yale University in 1 8yz. 
He was a productive scholar and, despite his gruffness 
and arctic exterior, also a stimulating teacher and plat- 
form speaker. Sumner's standard text, stated baldly, was 
that the progress of civilization requires an environment 

1 Andrew Carnegie, Autobiography (Boston : Houghton, Mif- 
flin Company, 1920), p. 336. 






RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 225 

of unrestricted competition wherein the process of natural 
selection may operate unhindered. He never hacked away 
from conclusions to which his premise led, though he 
provoked outcries from both right and left. No hireling of 
moguls, he rebuked businessmen who mouthed cliches 
about the virtues of competition and then wheedled con- 
gressmen into voting for preferential tariffs. He attacked 
reformers as sentimental quacks who were trying quixot- 
ically "to make the world over." Men simply were not 
equal, and Natural Rights were a chimera. Any system of 
socialism or semisocialism was doomed and would destroy 
liberty if attempted. 

Sumner prided himself on hard-headed realism and 
respect for facts. Echoing Malthus, he regarded nature as 
niggardly. It was "root, hog, or die." If poverty were to be 
overcome, the struggle must be pursued energetically by 
self-reliant men who were disciplined to sobriety, pru- 
dence, and industry. Sumner's model was his immigrant 
father, "the forgotten man" in the lecture of that title. 
This was Sumner's heart-felt exposition of his creed of 
rugged individualism. 

Had Sumner been asked to nominate the improvident 
man of his generation, he might have chosen Henry 
George, foremost among free-lance reformers. Sumner 
looked upon George as a mischievous peddler of nostrums. 

Henry George left school at age thirteen and knocked 
around the world seeking adventure and wealth. Dreams 
of gold lured him to California, but for years failure and 
poverty dogged his steps. Then he tried his hand at writ- 
ing and rapidly won influential posts with newspapers in 
San Francisco and Oakland. In the presidential campaign 
of 1876 he stumped the state for Tilden and the Demo- 
cratic ticket. He was rewarded by the self-discovery of his 
power in public speaking, and with a political sinecure 
which enabled him to complete his book, Progress and 
Poverty, published in 1879. After a slow start, the book 



226 RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 

caught on in a big way. Progress and Poverty catapulted 
George to fame and paved the way for his reformist cam- 
paigns and speaking tours the world over. 

In his title, Progress and Poverty, George stated the 
paradox of the age: As wealth increases, so does poverty 
and misery. It is irrelevant, said George, to gloss over 
poverty in America because it does not match the wide- 
spread despair in Europe and Asia. Poverty everywhere 
destroys human personality and produces social con- 
vulsions. If poverty is an evil and a palpable threat to 
liberty, what can be done to abolish it? 

Once George listened to a friend bemoan poverty and 
political corruption. "What do you intend to do about 
it?" he asked. "Nothing," sighed the friend. "You and 
I can do nothing at all. . . . We can only wait 
for evolution. Perhaps in four or five thousand years 
evolution may have carried men beyond this state of 
affairs." 2 George disagreed and made it his life business 
to dissolve "the steel chain of ideas" 3 that shackled men's 
minds. Through his writing and speaking he argued 
that man is not the pawn of immutable laws of nature 
or economics. Civilization is neither sustained nor urged 
forward by any slow grinding of impersonal forces in 
history. As a creature of God, man is endowed with 
Natural Rights, and he is under a continuing obligation 
to redress society in the interest of its members. Man 
must win social justice by thinking afresh on the great 
problems of the times. Thus George encouraged millions 
of people to break with fixed assumptions about their 
world and to think fluidly. 

Following his own injunctions, George denied that 
nature was niggardly, as Malthus and Sumner had 
stated. Nature has spread a banquet, said George, and 
modern technology has all but solved the problems of 

2 Quoted by Eric Goldman, Rendezvous with Destiny CNew 
York: Vintage Books, 1956), p. 66. 

3 Ibid. 



RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 227 

'production. Poverty is caused by imperfect distribution 
of wealth. Where, then, is the flaw in our system of dis- 
tribution? Since wealth is produced by labor and capital 
applied to land, it follows that in the distribution of 
wealth, land commands rent, labor commands wages, 
and capital commands interest. So far so good, but of 
these components of wealth, land alone is God-given. 
Moreover, land-value and economic rent are produced by 
population growth and concentrations, not by productive 
labor. Land-value and rent, then, constitute unearned 
increment that is unjustly pocketed by landholders and 
speculators. Therefore, George proposed public appropria- 
tion of rent through what he called the single tax. The 
net effect of the plan, he insisted, would be to replace 
other taxes, to augment rewards that belong to labor 
and capital, and to stimulate civic enterprise. In short, 
George's single tax was designed to redistribute wealth 
without jeopardy to individualism, capitalism, or political 
liberty. 

The single-tax movement created a stir, but it never 
took hold. But Georges passionate cry for social justice 
and for fresh thinking was heeded. He stimulated a 
helter-skelter of reform movements, and he jogged count- 
less individuals into following some liberal or radical 
path. George Bernard Shaw, for example, once heard 
George speak in London and was moved by his social 
message. Through this door Shaw entered Fabian Social- 
ism. The kind of influence George exercised in Amer- 
ica through his speeches is suggested by his two-night 
stand in Burlington, Iowa. The first night he spoke to 
the Knights of Labor on "The Crime of Poverty" and on 
the next night he gave his lecture on "Moses" in the 
Congregational Church. A close observer estimated that 
"perhaps a dozen men were now confirmed followers" 
while "some fifty followed at a greater distance." His 
biographer concludes that "It seems fair to assume that 



228 RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 

Burlington represents the impact of Henry George in 
many towns." 4 

The speeches of Sumner and George are, in a general 
sense, touchstones to major thought currents and agita- 
tions of the era— rugged individualism and melioristic 
reform. And each speech faithfully mirrors the style of 
mind and expression of the man who uttered it. 



4 Charles A. Barker, Henry George (New York: Oxford Uni- 
versity Press, 1955), PP- 442-443- 



The Forgotten Man 
WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER 



Born, Paterson, New Jersey, October 30, 1840; died, 
Englewood, New Jersey, April 12, 1910. Graduated from 
Yale, 1863; studied at Geneva and Gottingen, 1 863-1 866. 
Ordained Episcopal clergyman, 1869; active in ministry 
until i8yz. Professor of Political Economy at Yale, 1872- 
1909. Famed as teacher and scholar, as speaker and es- 
sayist on controversial subjects. Last important book is 
Folkways, 1907. 



/propose in this lecture to discuss one of the most 
subtile and widespread social fallacies. It consists in 
the impression made on the mind for the time being by a particular fact, 
or by the interests of a particular group of persons, to which attention is 
directed while other facts or the interests of other persons are entirely left 
out of account. I shall give a number of instances and illustrations of this 
in a moment, and I cannot expect you to understand what is meant from 
an abstract statement until these illustrations are before you, but just by 
way of a general illustration I will put one or two cases. 

Whenever a pestilence like yellow fever breaks out in any city, our at- 
tention is especially attracted towards it, and our sympathies are excited 
for the sufferers. If contributions are called for, we readily respond. Yet 

New Haven, Connecticut, February 8 or 9, 1883. William Graham Sumner, The 
Forgotten Man and Other Essays, A. G. Keller, ed. (New Haven : Yale University Press, 
191 8), pp. 465-495. Reprinted by permission. Original ms. in Sterling Library, Yale 
University. 

On time and place of first delivery, compare Keller, p. 505, with Maurice R. Davie, 
ed., Sumner Today (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), p. 3, footnote: "The 
original lecture on this subject, delivered January 30, 1883, in the Brooklyn Historical 
Rooms." 

229 



230 RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 

the number of persons who die prematurely from consumption every year 
greatly exceeds the deaths from yellow fever or any similar disease when it 
occurs, and the suffering entailed by consumption is very much greater. 
The suffering from consumption, however, never constitutes a public question 
or a subject of social discussion. If an inundation takes place anywhere, 
constituting a public calamity (and an inundation takes place somewhere in 
the civilized world nearly every year), public attention is attracted and 
public appeals are made, but the losses by great inundations must be 
insignificant compared with the losses by runaway horses, which, taken 
separately, scarcely obtain mention in a local newspaper. In hard times 
insolvent debtors are a large class. They constitute an interest and are able 
to attract public attention, so that social philosophers discuss their troubles 
and legislatures plan measures of relief. Insolvent debtors, however, are 
an insignificant body compared with the victims of commonplace mis- 
fortune, or accident, who are isolated, scattered, ungrouped and ungeneral- 
ized, and so are never made the object of discussion or relief. In seasons 
of ordinary prosperity, persons who become insolvent have to get out of 
their troubles as they can. They have no hope of relief from the legislature. 
The number of insolvents during a series of years of general prosperity, 
and their losses, greatly exceed the number and losses during a special 
period of distress. 

These illustrations bring out only one side of my subject, and that only 
partially. It is when we come to the proposed measures of relief for the 
evils which have caught public attention that we reach the real subject 
which deserves our attention. As soon as A observes something which 
seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with 
B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and 
help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X or, 
in the better case, what A, B and C shall do for X. As for A and B, who 
get a law to make themselves do for X what they are willing to do for him, 
we have nothing to say except that they might better have done it without 
any law, but what I want to do is to look up C. I want to show you what 
manner of man he is. I call him the Forgotten Man. Perhaps the appella- 
tion is not strictly correct. He is the man who never is thought of. He is 
the victim of the reformer, social speculator and philanthropist, and I hope 
to show you before I get through that he deserves your notice both for 
his character and for the many burdens which are laid upon him. 

No doubt one great reason for the phenomenon which I bring to your 
attention is the passion for reflection and generalization which marks 
our period. Since the printing press has come into such wide use, we have 
all been encouraged to philosophize about things in a way which was un- 
known to our ancestors. They lived their lives out in positive contact with 



WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER 23 1 

actual cases as they arose. They had little of this analysis, introspection, 
reflection and speculation which have passed into a habit and almost into 
a disease with us. Of all things which tempt to generalization and to 
philosophizing, social topics stand foremost. Each one of us gets some ex- 
perience of social forces. Each one has some chance for observation of social 
phenomena. There is certainly no domain in which generalization is easier. 
There is nothing about which people dogmatize more freely. Even men 
of scientific training in some department in which they would not tolerate 
dogmatism at all will not hesitate to dogmatize in the most reckless manner 
about social topics. The truth is, however, that science, as yet, has won 
less control of social phenomena than of any other class of phenomena. The 
most complex and difficult subject which we now have to study is the 
constitution of human society, the forces which operate in it, and the laws 
by which they act, and we know less about these things than about any 
others which demand our attention. In such a state of things, over-hasty 
generalization is sure to be extremely mischievous. You cannot take up a 
magazine or newspaper without being struck by the feverish interest with 
which social topics and problems are discussed, and if you were a student 
of social science, you would find in almost all these discussions evidence, 
not only that the essential preparation for the discussion is wanting, but 
that the disputants do not even know that there is any preparation to be 
gained. Consequently we are bewildered by contradictory dogmatizing. We 
find in all these discussions only the application of pet notions and the 
clashing of contradictory * Views." Remedies are confidently proposed for 
which there is no guarantee offered except that the person who prescribes 
the remedy says that he is sure it will work. We hear constantly of "reform," 
and the reformers turn out to be people who do not like things as they 
are and wish that they could be made nicer. We hear a great many ex- 
hortations to make progress from people who do not know in what direction 
they want to go. Consequently social reform is the most barren and tiresome 
subject of discussion amongst us, except aesthetics. 

I suppose that the first chemists seemed to be very hardhearted and 
unpoetical persons when they scouted the glorious dream of the alchemists 
that there must be some process for turning base metals into gold. I suppose 
that the men who first said, in plain, cold assertion, there is no fountain of 
eternal youth, seemed to be the most cruel and cold-hearted adversaries 
of human happiness. I know that the economists who say that if we could 
transmute lead into gold, it would certainly do us no good and might do 
great harm, are still regarded as unworthy of belief. Do not the money 
articles of the newspapers yet ring with the doctrine that we are getting 
rich when we give cotton and wheat for gold rather than when we give 
cotton and wheat for iron? 



232 RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 

Let us put down now the cold, hard fact and look at it just as it is. There 
is no device whatever to be invented for securing happiness without in- 
dustry, economy, and virtue. We are yet in the empirical stage as regards 
all our social devices. We have done something in science and art in the 
domain of production, transportation and exchange. But when you come 
to the laws of the social order, we know very little about them. Our laws 
and institutions by which we attempt to regulate our lives under the laws 
of nature which control society are merely a series of haphazard experiments. 
We come into collision with the laws and are not intelligent enough to 
understand wherein we are mistaken and how to correct our errors. We 
persist in our experiments instead of patiendy setting about the study of 
the laws and facts in order to see where we are wrong. Traditions and 
formulae have a dominion over us in legislation and social customs which 
we seem unable to break or even to modify. 

For my present purpose I ask your attention for a few moments to the 
notion of liberty, because the Forgotten Man would no longer be forgotten 
where there was true liberty. You will say that you know what liberty is. 
There is no term of more common or prouder use. None is more current, 
as if it were quite beyond the need of definition. Even as I write, however, 
I find in a leading review a new definition of civil liberty. Civil liberty the 
writer declares to be "the result of the restraint exercised by the sovereign 
people on the more powerful individuals and classes of the community, 
preventing them from availing themselves of the excess of their power to 
the detriment of the other classes." You notice here the use of the words 
"sovereign people" to designate a class of the population, not the nation 
as a political and civil whole. Wherever "people" is used in such a sense, 
there is always fallacy. Furthermore, you will recognize in this definition 
a very superficial and fallacious construction of English constitutional history. 
The writer goes on to elaborate that construction and he comes out at 
last with the conclusion that "a government by the people can, in no case, 
become a paternal government, since its lawmakers are its mandataries and 
servants carrying out its will, and not its fathers or its masters." This, then, 
is the point at which he desires to arrive, and he has followed a familiar 
device in setting up a definition to start with which would produce the 
desired deduction at the end. 

In the definition the word "people" was used for a class or section of the 
population. It is now asserted that if that section rules, there can be no 
paternal, that is, undue, government. That doctrine, however, is the very 
opposite of liberty, and contains the most vicious error possible in politics. 
The truth is that cupidity, selfishness, envy, malice, lust, vindictiveness, are 
constant vices of human nature. They are not confined to classes or to 
nations or particular ages of the world. They present themselves in the 



WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER 233 

palace, in the parliament, in the academy, in the church, in the workshop, 
and in the hovel. They appear in autocracies, theocracies, aristocracies, 
democracies, and ochlocracies all alike. They change their masks somewhat 
from age to age and from one form of society to another. All history is 
only one long story to this effect: men have struggled for power over their 
fellow-men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense 
of others and might shift the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon 
those of others. It is true that, until this time, the proletariat, the mass 
of mankind, have rarely had the power and they have not made such a 
record as kings and nobles and priests have made of the abuses they would 
perpetrate against their fellow-men when they could and dared. But what 
folly it is to think that vice and passion are limited by classes, that liberty 
consists only in taking power away from nobles and priests and giving it 
to artisans and peasants and that these latter will never abuse it! They 
will abuse it just as all others have done unless they are put under checks 
and guarantees, and there can be no civil liberty anywhere unless rights 
are guaranteed against all abuses, as well from proletarians as from generals, 
aristocrats, and ecclesiastics. 

Now what has been amiss in all the old arrangements? The evil of the 
old military and aristocratic governments was that some men enjoyed the 
fruits of other men's labor; that some persons' lives, rights, interests and 
happiness were sacrificed to other persons' cupidity and lust. What have 
our ancestors been striving for, under the name of civil liberty, for the 
last five hundred years? They have been striving to bring it about that 
each man and woman might live out his or her life according to his or 
her own notions of happiness and up to the measure of his or her own 
virtue and wisdom. How have they sought to accomplish this? They have 
sought to accomplish it by setting aside all arbitrary personal or class 
elements and introducing the reign of law and the supremacy of consti- 
tutional institutions like the jury, the habeas corpus, the independent 
judiciary, the separation of church and state, and the ballot. Note right 
here one point which will be important and valuable when I come more 
especially to the case of the Forgotten Man: whenever you talk of liberty, 
you must have two men in mind. The sphere of rights of one of these men 
trenches upon that of the other, and whenever you establish liberty for 
the one, you repress the other. Whenever absolute sovereigns are subjected 
to constitutional restraints, you always hear them remonstrate that their 
liberty is curtailed. So it is, in the sense that their power of determining 
what shall be done in the state is limited below what it was before and 
the similar power of other organs in the state is widened. Whenever the 
privileges of an aristocracy are curtailed, there is heard a similar complaint. 
The truth is that the line of limit or demarcation between classes as regards 



234 RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 

civil power has been moved and what has been taken from one class is 
given to another. 

We may now, then, advance a step in our conception of civil liberty. It 
is the status in which we find the true adjustment of rights between classes 
and individuals. Historically, the conception of civil liberty has been con- 
stantly changing. The notion of rights changes from one generation to 
another and the conception of civil liberty changes with it. If we try to 
formulate a true definition of civil liberty as an ideal thing towards which 
the development of political institutions is all the time tending, it would 
be this: Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law 
and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for 
his own welfare. 

This definition of liberty or civil liberty, you see, deals only with con- 
crete and actual relations of the civil order. There is some sort of a poetical 
and metaphysical notion of liberty afloat in men's minds which some people 
dream about but which nobody can define. In popular language it means 
that a man may do as he has a mind to. When people get this notion of 
liberty into their heads and combine with it the notion that they live in 
a free country and ought to have liberty, they sometimes make strange 
demands upon the state. If liberty means to be able to do as you have a 
mind to, there is no such thing in this world. Can the Czar of Russia do 
as he has a mind to? Can the Pope do as he has a mind to? Can the Presi- 
dent of the United States do as he has a mind to? Can Rothschild do as 
he has a mind to? Could a Humboldt or a Faraday do as he had a mind 
to? Could a Shakespeare or a Raphael do as he had a mind to? Can a tramp 
do as he has a mind to? Where is the man, whatever his station, possessions, 
or talents, who can get any such liberty? There is none. There is a doctrine 
floating about in our literature that we are born to the inheritance of 
certain rights. That is another glorious dream, for it would mean that there 
was something in this world which we got for nothing. But what is the 
truth? We are born into no right whatever but what has an equivalent and 
corresponding duty right alongside of it. There is no such thing on this 
earth as something for nothing. Whatever we inherit of wealth, knowledge, 
or institutions from the past has been paid for by the labor and sacrifice 
of preceding generations; and the fact that these gains are carried on, 
that the race lives and that the race can, at least within some cycle, accumu- 
late its gains, is one of the facts on which civilization rests. The law of the 
conservation of energy is not simply a law of physics; it is a law of the whole 
moral universe, and the order and truth of all things conceivable by man 
depends upon it. If there were any such liberty as that of doing as you 
have a mind to, the human race would be condemned to everlasting anarchy 
and war as these erratic wills crossed and clashed against each other. True 



WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER 235 

liberty lies in the equilibrium of rights and duties, producing peace, 
order, and harmony. As I have defined it, it means that a man's right to 
take power and wealth out of the social product is measured by the energy 
and wisdom which he has contributed to the social effort. 

Now if I have set this idea before you with any distinctness and success, 
you see that civil liberty consists of a set of civil institutions and laws which 
are arranged to act as impersonally as possible. It does not consist in majority 
rule or in universal suffrage or in elective systems at all. These are devices 
which are good or better just in the degree in which they secure liberty. 
The institutions of civil liberty leave each man to run his career in life 
in his own way, only guaranteeing to him that whatever he does in the way 
of industry, economy, prudence, sound judgment, etc., shall redound to 
his own welfare and shall not be diverted to some one else's benefit. Of 
course it is a necessary corollary that each man shall also bear the penalty 
of his own vices and his own mistakes. If I want to be free from any other 
man's dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under 
my control. 

Now with these definitions and general conceptions in mind, let us turn 
to the special class of facts to which, as I said at the outset, I invite your 
attention. We see that under a regime of liberty and equality before the 
law, we get the highest possible development of independence, self-reliance, 
individual energy, and enterprise, but we get these high social virtues at 
the expense of the old sentimental ties which used to unite baron and 
retainer, master and servant, sage and disciple, comrade and comrade. We 
are agreed that the son shall not be disgraced even by the crime of the 
father, much less by the crime of a more distant relative. It is a humane and 
rational view of things that each life shall stand for itself alone and not be 
weighted by the faults of another, but it is useless to deny that this view 
of things is possible only in a society where the ties of kinship have lost 
nearly all the intensity of poetry and romance which once characterized 
them. The ties of sentiment and sympathy also have faded out. We have 
come, under the regime of liberty and equality before the law, to a form 
of society which is based not on status, but on free contract. Now a society 
based on status is one in which classes, ranks, interests, industries, guilds, 
associations, etc., hold men in permanent relations to each other. Custom 
and prescription create, under status, ties, the strength of which lies in 
sentiment. Feeble remains of this may be seen in some of our academical 
societies to-day, and it is unquestionably a great privilege and advantage 
for any man in our society to win experience of the sentiments which 
belong to a strong and close association, just because the chances for 
such experience are nowadays very rare. In a society based on free contract, 
men come together as free and independent parties to an agreement which 



236 RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 

is of mutual advantage. The relation is rational, even rationalistic. It is not 
poetical. It does not exist from use and custom, but for reasons given, and 
it does not endure by prescription but ceases when the reason for it 
ceases. There is no sentiment in it at all. The fact is that, under the regime 
of liberty and equality before the law, there is no place for sentiment in 
trade or politics as public interests. Sentiment is thrown back into private 
life, into personal relations, and if ever it comes into a public discussion 
of an impersonal and general public question it always produces mischief. 

Now you know that "the poor and the weak" are continually put forward 
as objects of public interest and public obligation. In the appeals which 
are made, the terms "the poor" and "the weak" are used as if they were 
terms of exact definition. Except the pauper, that is to say, the man. who 
cannot earn his living or pay his way, there is no possible definition of a 
poor man. Except a man who is incapacitated by vice or by physical in- 
firmity, there is no definition of a weak man. The paupers and the 
physically incapacitated are an inevitable charge on society. About them 
no more need be said. But the weak who constantly arouse the pity of 
humanitarians and philanthopists are the shiftless, the imprudent, the negli- 
gent, the impractical, and the inefficient, or they are the idle, the intemperate, 
the extravagant, and the vicious. Now the troubles of these persons are 
constantly forced upon public attention, as if they and their interests deserved 
especial consideration, and a great portion of all organized and unorganized 
effort for the common welfare consists in attempts to relieve these classes 
of people. I do not wish to be understood now as saying that nothing ought 
to be done for these people by those who are stronger and wiser. That is 
not my point. What I want to do is to point out the thing which is over- 
looked and the error which is made in all these charitable efforts. The 
notion is accepted as if it were not open to any question that if you help 
the inefficient and vicious you may gain something for society or you may 
not, but that you lose nothing. This is a complete mistake. Whatever 
capital you divert to the support of a shiftless and good-for-nothing person 
is so much diverted from some other employment, and that means from 
somebody else. I would spend any conceivable amount of zeal and eloquence 
if I possessed it to try to make people grasp this idea. Capital is force. If 
it goes one way it cannot go another. If you give a loaf to a pauper you 
cannot give the same loaf to a laborer. Now this other man who would 
have got it but for the charitable sentiment which bestowed it on a worthless 
member of society is the Forgotten Man. The philanthropists and humani- 
tarians have their minds all full of the wretched and miserable whose case 
appeals to compassion, attacks the sympathies, takes possession of the imagina- 
tion, and excites the emotions. They push on towards the quickest and 
easiest remedies and they forget the real victim. 



WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER 237 

Now who is the Forgotten Man? He is the simple, honest laborer, ready 
to earn his living by productive work. We pass him by because he is in- 
dependent, self-supporting, and asks no favors. He does not appeal to the 
emotions or excite the sentiments. He only wants to make a contract and 
fulfill it, with respect on both sides and favor on neither side. He must 
get his living out of the capital of the country. The larger the capital is, 
the better living he can get. Every particle of capital which is wasted on 
the vicious, the idle, and the shiftless is so much taken from the capital 
available to reward the independent and productive laborer. But we stand 
with our backs to the independent and productive laborer all the time. We 
do not remember him because he makes no clamor; but I appeal to you 
whether he is not the man who ought to be remembered first of all, and 
whether, on any sound social theory, we ought not to protect him against 
the burdens of the good-for-nothing. In these last years I have read hundreds 
of articles and heard scores of sermons and speeches which were really 
glorifications of the good-for-nothing, as if these were the charge of society, 
recommended by right reason to its care and protection. We are addressed 
all the time as if those who are respectable were to blame because some are 
not so, and as if there were an obligation on the part of those- who have 
done their duty towards those who have not done their duty. Every man is 
bound to take care of himself and his family and to do his share of the 
work of society. It is totally false that one who has done so is bound to 
bear the care and charge of those who are wretched because they have not 
done so. The silly popular notion is that the beggars live at the expense of 
the rich, but the truth is that those who eat and produce not, live at the 
expense of those who labor and produce. The next time that you are 
tempted to subscribe a dollar to a charity, I do not tell you not to do it, 
because after you have fairly considered the matter, you may think it 
right to do it, but I do ask you to stop and remember the Forgotten Man 
and understand that if you put your dollar in the savings bank it will go to 
swell the capital of the country which is available for division amongst 
those who, while they earn it, will reproduce it with increase. 

Let us now go on to another class of cases. There are a great many schemes 
brought forward for "improving the condition of the working classes/' I have 
shown already that a free man cannot take a favor. One who takes a favor 
or submits to patronage demeans himself. He falls under obligation. He 
cannot be free and he cannot assert a station of equality with the man who 
confers the favor on him. The only exception is where there are exceptional 
bonds of affection or friendship, that is, where the sentimental relation 
supersedes the free relation. Therefore, in a country which is a free democ- 
racy, all propositions to do something for the working classes have an air 
of patronage and superiority which is impertinent and out of place. No 



238 RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 

one can do anything for anybody else unless he has a surplus of energy 
to dispose of after taking care of himself. In the United States, the working 
classes, technically so called, are the strongest classes. It is they who have 
a surplus to dispose of if anybody has. Why should anybody else offer to 
take care of them or to serve them? They can get whatever they think worth 
having and, at any rate, if they are free men in a free state, it is ignominious 
and unbecoming to introduce fashions of patronage and favoritism here. 
A man who, by superior education and experience of business, is in a posi- 
tion to advise a struggling man of the wages class, is certainly held to do so 
and will, I believe, always be willing and glad to do so; but this sort of 
activity lies in the range of private and personal relations. 

I now, however, desire to direct attention to the public, general, and 
impersonal schemes, and I point out the fact that, if you undertake to lift 
anybody, you must have a fulcrum of point of resistance. All the elevation 
you give to one must be gained by an equivalent depression on some one 
else. The question of gain to society depends upon the balance of the 
account, as regards the position of the persons who undergo the respective 
operations. But nearly all the schemes for "improving the condition of the 
working man" involve an elevation of some working men at the expense 
of other working men. When you expend capital or labor to elevate some 
persons who come within the sphere of your influence, you interfere in the 
conditions of competition. The advantage of some is won by an equivalent 
loss of others. The difference is not brought about by the energy and effort of 
the persons themselves. If it were, there would be nothing to be said about it, 
for we constantly see people surpass others in the rivalry of life and 
carry off the prizes which the others must do without. In the cases I am 
discussing, the difference is brought about by an interference which must 
be partial, arbitrary, accidental, controlled by favoritism and personal prefer- 
ence. I do not say, in this case, either, that we ought to do no work of this 
kind. On the contrary, I believe that the arguments for it quite outweigh, 
in many cases, the arguments against it. What I desire, again, is to bring 
out the forgotten element which we always need to remember in order 
to make a wise decision as to any scheme of this kind. I want to call to mind 
the Forgotten Man, because, in this case also, if we recall him and go to 
look for him, we shall find him patiently and perseveringly, manfully and 
independently struggling against adverse circumstances without complaining 
or begging. If, then, we are led to heed the groaning and complaining of 
others and to take measures for helping these others, we shall, before we 
know it, push down this man who is trying to help himself. 

Let us take another class of cases. So far we have said nothing about the 
abuse of legislation. We all seem to be under the delusion that the rich 
pay the taxes. Taxes are not thrown upon the consumers with any such 



WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER 239 

directness and completeness as is sometimes assumed; but that, in ordinary 
states of the market, taxes on houses fall, for the most part, on the tenants 
and that taxes on commodities fall, for the most part, on the consumers, 
is beyond question. Now the state and municipality go to great expense 
to support policemen and sheriffs and judicial officers, to protect people 
against themselves, that is, against the results of their own folly, vice, and 
recklessness. Who pays for it? Undoubtedly the people who have not been 
guilty of folly, vice, or recklessness. Out of nothing comes nothing. We 
cannot collect taxes from people who produce nothing and save nothing. 
The people who have something to tax must be those who have produced and 
saved. 

When you see a drunkard in the gutter, you are disgusted, but you pity 
him. When a policeman comes and picks him up you are satisfied. You say 
that "society" has interfered to save the drunkard from perishing. Society 
is a fine word, and it saves us the trouble of thinking to say that society 
acts. The truth is that the policeman is paid by somebody, and when we 
talk about society we forget who it is that pays. It is the Forgotten Man 
again. It is the industrious workman going home from a hard day's work, 
whom you pass without noticing, who is mulcted of a percentage of his day's 
earnings to hire a policeman to save the drunkard from himself. All the 
public expenditure to prevent vice has the same effect. Vice is its own 
curse. If we let nature alone, she cures vice by the most frightful penalties. 
It may shock you to hear me say it, but when you get over the shock, it 
will do you good to think of it: a drunkard in the gutter is just where he 
ought to be. Nature is working away at him to get him out of the way, just 
as she sets up her processes of dissolution to remove whatever is a failure 
in its line. Gambling and less mentionable vices all cure themselves by the 
ruin and dissolution of their victims. Nine-tenths of our measures for pre- 
venting vice are really protective towards it, because they ward off the 
penalty. "Ward off," I say, and that is the usual way of looking at it; but 
is the penalty really annihilated? By no means. It is turned into police and 
court expenses and spread over those who have resisted vice. It is the 
Forgotten Man again who has been subjected to the penalty while our 
minds were full of the drunkards, spendthrifts, gamblers, and other victims 
of dissipation. Who is, then, the Forgotten Man? He is the clean, quiet, 
virtuous, domestic citizen, who pays his debts and his taxes and is never 
heard of out of his little circle. Yet who is there in the society of a civilized 
state who deserves to be remembered and considered by the legislator and 
statesman before this man? 

Another class of cases is closely connected with this last. There is an 
apparently invincible prejudice in people's minds in favor of state regula- 
tion. All experience is against state regulation and in favor of liberty. The 



240 RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 

freer the civil institutions are, the more weak or mischievous state regula- 
tion is. The Prussian bureaucracy can do a score of things for the citizen 
which no governmental organ in the United States can do; and, con- 
versely, if we want to be taken care of as Prussians and Frenchmen are, 
we must give up something of our personal liberty. 

Now we have a great many well-intentioned people among us who believe 
that they are serving their country when they discuss plans for regulating 
the relations of employer and employee, or the sanitary regulations of 
dwellings, or the construction of factories, or the way to behave on Sunday, 
or what people ought not to eat or drink or smoke. All this is harmless 
enough and well enough as a basis of mutual encouragement and missionary 
enterprise, but it is almost always made a basis of legislation. The reformers 
want to get a majority, that is, to get the power of the state and so to make 
other people do what the reformers think it right and wise to do. A and B 
agree to spend Sunday in a certain way. They get a law passed to make 
C pass it in their way. They determine to be teetotallers and they get a law 
passed to make C be a teetotaller for the sake of D who is likely to drink 
too much. Factory acts for women and children are right because women 
and children are not on an equal footing with men and cannot, therefore, 
make contracts properly. Adult men, in a free state, must be left to make 
their own contracts and defend themselves. It will not do to say that some 
men are weak and unable to make contracts any better than women. Our 
civil institutions assume that all men are equal in political capacity and 
all are given equal measure of political power and right, which is not the 
case with women and children. If, then, we measure political rights by one 
theory and social responsibilities by another, we produce an immoral and 
vicious relation. A and B, however, get factory acts and other acts passed 
regulating the relation of employers and employee and set armies of com- 
missioners and inspectors traveling about to see to things, instead of using 
their efforts, if any are needed, to lead the free men to make their own 
conditions as to what kind of factory buildings they will work in, how 
many hours they will work, what they will do on Sunday and so on. The 
consequence is that men lose the true education in freedom which is needed 
to support free institutions. They are taught to rely on government officers 
and inspectors. The whole system of government inspectors is corrupting 
to free institutions. In England, the liberals used always to regard state 
regulation with suspicion, but since they have come into power, they 
plainly believe that state regulation is a good thing— if they regulate— be- 
cause, of course, they want to bring about good things. In this country each 
party takes turns, according as it is in or out, in supporting or denouncing 
the non-interference theory. 

Now, if we have state regulation, what is always forgotten is this: Who 



WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER 24 1 

pays for it? Who is the victim of it? There always is a victim. The workmen 
who do not defend themselves have to pay for the inspectors who defend 
them. The whole system of social regulation by boards, commissioners, 
and inspectors consists in relieving negligent people of the consequences of 
their negligence and so leaving them to continue negligent without cor- 
rection. That system also turns away from the agencies which are close, 
direct, and germane to the purpose, and seeks others. Now, if you relieve 
negligent people of the consequences of their negligence, you can only 
throw those consequences on the people who have not been negligent. 
If you turn away from the agencies which are direct and cognate to the 
purpose, you can only employ other agencies. Here, then, you have your 
Forgotten Man again. The man who has been careful and prudent and 
who wants to go on and reap his advantages for himself and his children 
is arrested just at that point, and he is told that he must go and take care of 
some negligent employees in a factory or on a railroad who have not 
provided precautions for themselves or have not forced their employers to 
provide precautions, or negligent tenants who have not taken care of their 
own sanitary arrangements, or negligent householders who have not pro- 
vided against fire, or negligent parents who have not sent their children 
to school. If the Forgotten Man does not go, he must hire an inspector 
to go. No doubt it is often worth his while to go or send, rather than leave 
the thing undone, on account of his remoter interest; but what I want 
to show is that all this is unjust to the Forgotten Man, and that the re- 
formers and philosophers miss the point entirely when they preach that it is 
his duty to do all this work. Let them preach to the negligent to learn 
to take care of themselves. Whenever A and B put their heads together and 
decide what A, B and C must do for D, there is never any pressure on A 
and B. They consent to it and like it. There is rarely any pressure on D 
because he does not like it and contrives to evade it. The pressure all comes 
on C. Now, who is C? He is always the man who, if let alone, would make 
a reasonable use of his liberty without abusing it. He would not constitute 
any social problem at all and would not need any regulation. He is the 
Forgotten Man again, and as soon as he is brought from his obscurity you 
see that he is just that one amongst us who is what we all ought to be. 

[Through a series of examples, Sumner goes on to decry claims to preferential 
treatment for various social and economic groups, all of which impose an 
unjust burden upon the Forgotten Man.] 



It is plain enough that the Forgotten Man and the Forgotten Woman 
are the very life and substance of society. They are the ones who ought to 
be first and always remembered. They are always forgotten by sentimental- 



242 RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 

ists, philanthropists, reformers, enthusiasts, and every description of specu- 
lator in sociology, political economy, or political science. If a student of 
any of these sciences ever comes to understand the position of the For- 
gotten Man and to appreciate his true value, you will find such student 
an uncompromising advocate of the strictest scientific thinking on all social 
topics, and a cold and hard-hearted skeptic towards all artificial schemes of 
social amelioration. If it is desired to bring about social improvements, 
bring us a scheme for relieving the Forgotten Man of some of his burdens. 
He is our productive force which we are wasting. Let us stop wasting his 
force. Then we shall have a clean and simple gain for the whole society. 
The Forgotten Man is weighted down with the cost and burden of the 
schemes for making everybody happy, with the cost of public beneficence, 
with the support of all the loafers, with the loss of all the economic quackery, 
with the cost of all the jobs. Let us remember him a little while. Let us 
take some of the burdens off him. Let us turn our pity on him instead of 
on the good-for-nothing. It will be only justice to him, and society will 
greatly gain by it. Why should we not also have the satisfaction of thinking 
and caring for a little while about the clean, honest, industrious, independent, 
self-supporting men and women who have not inherited much to make life 
luxurious for them, but who are doing what they can to get on in the 
world without begging from anybody, especially since all they want is 
to be let alone, with good friendship and honest respect? Certainly the 
philanthropists and sentimentalists have kept our attention for a long time 
on the nasty, shiftless, criminal, whining, crawling, and good-for-nothing 
people, as if they alone deserved our attention. 

The Forgotten Man is never a pauper. He almost always has a little 
capital because it belongs to the character of the man to save something. He 
never has more than a little. He is, therefore, poor in the popular sense, 
although in the correct sense he is not so. I have said already that if you 
learn to look for the Forgotten Man and to care for him, you will be very 
skeptical toward all philanthropic and humanitarian schemes. It is clear 
now that the interest of the Forgotten Man and the interest of "the poor," 
"the weak," and the other petted classes are in antagonism. In fact, the 
warning to you to look for the Forgotten Man comes the minute that 
the orator or writer begins to talk about the poor man. That minute the 
Forgotten Man is in danger of a new assault, and if you intend to meddle 
in the matter at all, then is the minute for you to look about for him and 
to give him your aid. Hence, if you care for the Forgotten Man, you will 
be sure to be charged with not caring for the poor. Whatever you do for 
any of the petted classes wastes capital. If you do anything for the Forgotten 
Man, you must secure him his earnings and savings, that is, you legislate 
for the security of capital and for its free employment; you must oppose 



WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER 243 

paper money, wildcat banking and usury laws and you must maintain the 
inviolability of contracts. Hence you must be prepared to be told that 
you favor the capitalist class, the enemy of the poor man. 

What the Forgotten Man really wants is true liberty. Most of his wrongs 
and woes come from the fact that there are yet mixed together in our in- 
stitutions the old mediaeval theories of protection and personal dependence 
and the modern theories of independence and individual liberty. The 
consequence is that the people who are clever enough to get into positions 
of control, measure their own rights by the paternal theory and their own 
duties by the theory of independent liberty. It follows that the Forgotten 
Man, who is hard at work at home, has to pay both ways. His rights are 
measured by the theory of liberty, that is, he has only such as he can con- 
quer. His duties are measured by the paternal theory, that is, he must 
discharge all which are laid upon him, as is always the fortune of parents. 
People talk about the paternal theory of government as if it were a very 
simple thing. Analyze it, however, and you see that in every paternal rela- 
tion there must be two parties, a parent and a child, and when you speak 
metaphorically, it makes all the difference in the world who is parent and 
who is child. Now, since we, the people, are the state, whenever there is 
any work to be done or expense to be paid, and since the petted classes 
and the criminals and the jobbers cost and do not pay, it is they who are 
in the position of the child, and it is the Forgotten Man who is the parent. 
What the Forgotten Man needs, therefore, is that we come to a clearer 
understanding of liberty and to a more complete realization of it. Every step 
which we win in liberty will set the Forgotten Man free from some of his 
burdens and allow him to use his powers for himself and for the common- 
wealth. 



The Crime of Poverty 
HENRY GEORGE 



Born, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 2, 1839; 
died, New York City, October 29, 1897. Attended public 
school in Philadelphia. Went to California, 1858, and 
ultimately became a newspaperman. Wrote Our Land 
and Land Policy, 18 j 1, which he expanded into Progress 
and Poverty, 1879* Campaigned for single tax, free trade, 
and assorted causes. Ran unsuccessfully in 1886 as liberal 
and labor candidate for mayor of New York City. He 
died while again campaigning for that office in 1897. 



iadies and Gentlemen: I propose to talk to you to- 
night of the Crime of Poverty. I cannot, in a short 
time, hope to convince you of much; but the thing of things I should like 
to show you is that poverty is a crime. I do not mean that it is a crime to be 
poor. Murder is a crime; but it is not a crime to be murdered; and a man who 
is in poverty, I look upon not as a criminal in himself so much as the victim 
of a crime for which others, as well, perhaps, as himself, are responsible. That 
poverty is a curse, the bitterest of curses, we all know. Carlyle was right 
when he said that the hell of which Englishmen were most afraid was the 
hell of poverty; and this is true, not of Englishmen alone, but of people all 
over the civilized world, no matter what their nationality. It is to escape this 
hell that we strive and strain and struggle; and work on oftentimes in blind 
habit long after the necessity for work is gone. 

The curse born of poverty is not confined to the poor alone; it runs through 
all classes, even to the very rich. They, too, suffer; they must suffer; for there 

Opera House, Burlington, Iowa, April, 1885, under the auspices of Burlington As- 
sembly, No. 3135, Knights of Labor, which afterwards distributed 50,000 copies of the 
speech. Henry George, The Crime of Poverty (Cincinnati: The Joseph Fels Fund of 
America, n.d.)> pp- 5~39- Complete text also in Henry George, Our Land and Land 
Policy (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1904), pp. 187-218. 

244 



HENRY GEORGE 245 

cannot be suffering in a community from which any class can totally escape. 
The vice, the crime, the ignorance, the meanness, born of poverty, poison, 
so to speak, the very air which rich and poor alike must breathe. 

I walked down one of your streets this morning, and I saw three men going 
along with their hands chained together. I knew for certain that those men 
were not rich men; and, although I do not know the offense for which they 
were carried in chains through your streets, this, I think, I can safely say, 
that, if you trace it up you will find it in some way to spring from poverty. 
Nine-tenths of human misery, I think you will find, if you look, to be due to 
poverty. If a man chooses to be poor, he commits no crime in being poor, 
provided his poverty hurts no one but himself. If a man has others dependent 
upon him; if there are a wife and children whom it is his duty to support, 
then, if he voluntarily chooses poverty, it is a crime— aye, and I think that, 
in most cases, the men who have no one to support but themselves are men 
that are shirking their duty. A woman comes into the world for every man; 
and for every man who lives a single life, caring only for himself, there is 
some woman who is deprived of her natural supporter. But while a man who 
chooses to be poor cannot be charged with crime, it is certainly a crime to 
force poverty on others. And it seems to me clear that the great majority of 
those who suffer from poverty are poor not from their own particular faults, 
but because of conditions imposed by society at large. Therefore, I hold that 
poverty is a crime— not an individual crime, but a social crime; a crime for 
which we all, poor as well as rich, are responsible. 

Two or three weeks ago I went one Sunday evening to the church of a 
famous Brooklyn preacher. Mr. Sankey was singing, and something like a 
revival was going on there. The clergyman told some anecdotes connected 
with the revival, and recounted some of the reasons why men failed to become 
Christians. One case he mentioned struck me. He said he had noticed on the 
outskirts of the congregation, night after night, a man who listened intently, 
and who gradually moved forward. One night, the clergyman said, he went 
to him, saying, "My brother, are you not ready to become a Christian?" The 
man said, no he was not. He said it, not in a defiant tone, but in a sorrowful 
tone. The clergyman asked him why, whether he did not believe in the truths 
he had been hearing? Yes, he believed them all. Why, then, wouldn't he 
become a Christian? "Well," he said, "I can't join the church without giving 
up my business; and it is necessary for the support of my wife and children. 
If I give that up, I don't know how in the world I can get along. I had a hard 
time before I found my present business, and I cannot afford to give it up. 
Yet, I can't become a Christian without giving it up." The clergyman asked, 
"Are you a rum-seller?" No, he was not a rum-seller. Well, the clergyman 
said, he didn't know what in the world the man could be; it seemed to 
him that a rum-seller was the only man who does a business that would 
prevent his becoming a Christian; and he finally said, "What is your busi- 






246 RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 

ness?" The man said, "I sell soap." "Soap!" exclaimed the clergyman, "you 
sell soap? How in the world does that prevent you becoming a Christian?" 
"Well," the man said, "it is this way; the soap I sell is one of these patent 
soaps that are extensively advertised as enabling you to clean clothes very 
quickly; as containing no deleterious compound whatever. Every cake of 
the soap I sell is wrapped in a paper on which is printed a statement 
that it contains no injurious chemicals, whereas the truth of the matter is 
that it does, and that though it will take the dirt out of the clothes pretty 
quickly, it will, in a little while, rot them completely out. I have to make 
my living in this way; and I cannot feel that I can become a Christian if 
I sell that soap." The minister went on, describing how he labored un- 
successfully with that man, and finally wound up by saying, "He stuck to 
his soap, and lost his soul." 

But, if that man lost his soul, was it his fault alone? Whose fault is it 
that social conditions are such that men have to make that terrible choice 
between what conscience tells them is right, and the necessity of earning 
a living? I hold that it is the fault of society; that it is the fault of us 
all. Pestilence is a curse. The man who would bring cholera to this country, 
or the man who, having the power to prevent its coming here, would make 
no effort to do so, would be guilty of a crime. Poverty is worse than cholera; 
poverty kills more people than pestilence, even in the best of times. Look at 
the death statistics of our cities; see where the deaths come quickest; see 
where it is that little children die like flies— it is in the poorer quarters. 
And the man who looks with careless eyes upon the ravages of this pestilence, 
the man who does not set himself to stay and eradicate it, he, I say, is guilty 
of a crime. 

If poverty is appointed by the power which is above us all, then it is no 
crime; but if poverty is unnecessary, then it is a crime for which society is 
responsible, and for which society must suffer. 

I hold, and I think no one who looks at the facts can fail to see, that 
poverty is utterly unnecessary. It is not by the decree of the Almighty, but 
it is because of our own injustice, our own selfishness, our own ignorance, 
that this scourge, worse than any pestilence, ravages our civilization, bring- 
ing want and suffering and degradation, destroying souls as well as bodies. 
Look over the world, in this hey-day of nineteenth century civilization. In 
every civilized country under the sun you will find men and women whose 
condition is worse than that of the savage; men and women and little 
children with whom the veriest savage could not afford to exchange. Even 
in this new city of yours, with virgin soil around you, you have had this 
winter to institute a relief society. Your roads have been filled with tramps, 
fifteen, I am told, at one time taking shelter in a round-house here. As 
here, so everywhere, and poverty is deepest where wealth most abounds. 



HENRY GEORGE 247 

What more unnatural than this? There is nothing in nature like this 
poverty which today curses us. We see rapine in nature; we see one species 
destoying another; but as a general thing animals do not feed on their 
own kind; and, wherever we see one kind enjoying plenty, all individuals 
of that kind share it. No man, I think, ever saw a herd of buffalo, of which 
a few were fat and the great majority lean. No man ever saw a flock of 
birds, of which two or three were swimming in grease, and the others all 
skin and bone. Nor in savage life is there anything like the poverty that 
festers in our civilization. 

In a rude state of society there are seasons of want, seasons when people 
starve; but they are seasons when the earth has refused to yield her increase, 
when the rain has not fallen from the heavens, or when the land has been 
swept by some foe— not when there is plenty; and yet the peculiar character- 
istic of this modern poverty of ours is, that it is deepest where wealth most 
abounds. 

Why, today, while over the civilized world there is so much distress, so 
much want? What is the cry that goes up? What is the current explanation 
of the hard times? Over-production! There are so many clothes that men 
must go ragged; so much coal that in the bitter winters people have to shiver; 
such over-filled granaries that people actually die by starvation! Want due 
to over-production! Was a greater absurdity ever uttered? How can there 
be over-production till all have enough? It is not over-production; it is 
unjust distribution. 

Poverty necessary! Why, think of the enormous powers that are latent 
in the human brain! Think how invention enables us to do with the power 
of one man, what not long ago could not be done by the power of a thousand. 
Think that in England alone, the steam machinery in operation is said to 
exert a productive force greater than the physical force of the population 
of the world, were they all adults. And yet we have only begun to invent 
and discover. We have not yet utilized all that has already been invented 
and discovered. And look at the powers of the earth. They have hardly been 
touched. In every direction as we look, new resources seem to open. Man's 
ability to produce wealth seems almost infinite— we can set no bounds to 
it. Look at the power that is flowing by your city in the current of the 
Mississippi that might be set at work for you. So in every direction energy 
that we might utilize goes to waste; resources that we might draw upon are 
untouched. Yet men are delving and straining to satisfy mere animal wants; 
women are working, working, working their lives away, and too frequently 
turning in despair from that hard struggle to cast away all that makes the 
charm of woman. 



248 RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 

There is a cause for this poverty, and if you trace it down, you will find its 
root in a primary injustice. Look over the world today— poverty everywhere. 
The cause must be a common one. You cannot attribute it to the tariff, or 
to the form of government, or to this thing or to that in which nations 
differ; because, as deep poverty is common to them all, the cause that 
produces it must be a common cause. What is that common cause? There 
is one sufficient cause that is common to all nations; and that is, the ap- 
propriation as the property of some, of that natural element on which and 
from which, all must live. 

Take that fact I have spoken of, that appalling fact that, even now, it is 
harder to live than it was in the ages dark and rude five centuries ago— 
how do you explain it? There is no difficulty in finding the cause. Whoever 
reads the history of England, or the history of any other civilized nation 
(but I speak of the history of England because that is the history with which 
we are best acquainted) will see the reason. For century after century a 
Parliament composed of aristocrats and employers passed laws endeavoring 
to reduce wages, but in vain. Men could not be crowded down to wages 
that gave a mere living because the bounty of nature was not wholly shut 
up from them; because some remains of the recognition of the truth that 
all men have equal rights on the earth still existed; because the land of 
that country, that which was held in private possession, was only held 
on a tenure derived from the nation, and for a rent payable back to the 
nation. The church lands supported the expenses of public worship, of the 
maintenance of seminaries, and the care of the poor; the crown lands 
defrayed the expenses of the civil list; and from a third portion of the 
lands, those held under military tenures, the army was provided for. There 
was no national debt in England at that time. They carried on wars for 
hundreds of years, but at the charge of the landowners. And, more im- 
portant still, there remained everywhere, and you can see in every old 
English town their traces to this day, the common lands to which any of 
the neighborhood was free. It was as those lands were enclosed; it was as 
the commons were gradually monopolized, as the church lands were made the 
prey of greedy courtiers, as the crown lands were given away as absolute 
property to the favorites of the king, as the military tenants shirked their 
rents, and laid the expenses they had agreed to defray upon the nation 
in taxation, that bore upon industry and upon thrift— it was then that poverty 
began to deepen, and the tramp appeared in England, just as today he 
is appearing in our new States. 

Now, think of it— is not land monopolization a sufficient reason for poverty? 
What is man? In the first place, he is an animal, a land animal, who cannot 
live without land. All that man produces comes from land; all productive 
labor in the final analysis consists in working up land; or materials are 
drawn from land into such forms as fit them for the satisfaction of human 



HENRY GEORGE 249 

wants and desires. Why, man's very body is drawn from the land. Children 
of the soil, we come from the land, and to the land we must return. Take 
away from man all that belongs to the land, and what have you but a 
disembodied spirit? Therefore, he who holds the land on which and from 
which another man must live, is that man's master; and the man is his 
slave. The man who holds the land on which I must live can command 
me to life or to death just as absolutely as though I were his chattel. Talk 
about abolishing slavery— we have not abolished slavery— we have only 
abolished one rude form of it, chattel slavery. There is a deeper and more 
insidious form, a more cursed form yet before us to abolish, in this industrial 
slavery that makes a man a virtual slave, while taunting him and mocking 
him with the name of freedom. Poverty! want! they will sting as much as 
the lash. Slavery! God knows there are horrors enough in slavery; but there 
are deeper horrors in our civilized society today. Bad as chattel slavery 
was, it did not drive slave mothers to kill their children, yet you may read 
in official reports that the system of child insurance, which has taken root 
so strongly in England, and which is now spreading over our Eastern 
States, has perceptibly and largely increased the rate of child mortality!— 
What does that mean? 

Robinson Crusoe, as you know, when he rescued Friday from the can- 
nibals, made him his slave. Friday had to serve Crusoe. But, supposing 
Crusoe had said, "Oh, man and brother, I am very glad to see you, and I 
welcome you to this island, and you shall be a free and independent citizen, 
with just as much to say as I have— except that this island is mine— and, 
of course, as I can do as I please with my own property, you must not use it 
save upon my terms." Friday would have been just as much Crusoe's slave as 
though he had called him one. Friday was not a fish, he could not swim off 
through the sea; he was not a bird, and could not fly off through the air; 
if he lived at all, he had to live on that island. And if that island was 
Crusoe's, Crusoe was his master through life to death. 



This land question is the bottom question. Man is a land animal. Suppose 
you want to build a house; can you build it without a place to put it? 
What is it built of? Stone, or mortar, or wood, or iron— they all come from 
the earth. Think of any article of wealth you choose, any of those things 
which men struggle for, where do they come from? From the land. It is 
the bottom question. 

The land question is simply the labor question; and when some men 
own that element from which all wealth must be drawn, and upon which 
all must live, then they have the power of living without work, and, there- 
fore, those who do work get less of the products of work. 

Did you ever think of the utter absurdity and strangeness of the fact 



250 RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 

that, all over the civilized world, the working classes are the poor classes? 
Go into any city in the world, and get into a cab, and ask the man to 
drive you to where the working people live; he won't take you to where the 
fine houses are; he will take you, on the contrary, into the squalid quarters, 
the poorer quarters. Did you ever think how curious that is? Think for 
a moment how it would strike a rational being who had never been on the 
earth before, if such an intelligence could come down, and you were to 
explain to him how we live on earth, how houses, and food and clothing, 
and all the many things we need, are all produced by work, would he 
not think that the working people would be the people who lived in the 
finest houses and had most of everything that work produces? Yet, whether 
you took him to London or Paris, or New York, or even to Burlington, 
he would find that those called working people were the people who lived 
in the poorest houses. 

All this is strange— just think of it. We naturally despise poverty; and 
it is reasonable that we should. I do not say— I distinctly repudiate it— 
that the people who are poor are poor always from their own fault, or even 
in most cases; but it ought to be so. If any good man or woman had the 
power to create a world, it would be a sort of a world in which no one would 
be poor unless he was lazy or vicious. But that is just precisely the kind of 
a world that this is; that is just precisely the kind of a world that the 
Creator has made. Nature gives to labor, and to labor alone; there must 
be human work before any article of wealth can be produced; and, in a 
natural state of things, the man who toiled honestly and well would be the 
rich man, and he who did not work would be poor. We have so reversed 
the order of nature, that we are accustomed to think of a workingman as 
a poor man. 

And if you trace it out I believe you will see that the primary cause of 
this is that we compel those who work to pay others for permission to do 
so. You buy a coat, a horse, a house; there you are paying the seller for 
labor exerted, for something that he has produced, or that he has got from 
the man who did produce it; but when you pay a man for land, what are 
you paying him for? You pay him for something that no man produced; 
you pay him for something that was here before man was, or for a value 
that was created, not by him individually, but by the community of which 
you are a part. What is the reason that the land here, where we stand 
tonight, is worth more than it was twenty-five years ago? What is the 
reason that land in the center of New York, that once could be bought 
by the mile for a jug of whiskey, is now worth so much that, though you 
were to cover it with gold, you would not have its value? Is it not because 
of the increase of population? Take away that population, and where would 
the value of the land be? Look at it in any way you please. 



HENRY GEORGE 25 1 

We talk about over-production. How can there be such a thing as over- 
production while people want? All these things that are said to be over- 
produced are desired by many people. Why do they not get them? They 
do not get them because they have not the means to buy them; not that 
they do not want them. Why have they not the means to buy them? They 
earn too little. When great masses of men have to work for an average of 
$1.40 a day, it is no wonder that great quantities of goods cannot be sold. 

Now, why is it that men have to work for such low wages? Because, if 
they were to demand higher wages, there are plenty of unemployed men 
ready to step into their places. It is this mass of unemployed men who compel 
that fierce competition that drives wages down to the point of bare sub- 
sistence. Why is it that there are men who cannot get employment? Did 
you ever think what a strange thing it is that men cannot find employment? 
Adam had no difficulty in finding employment; neither had Robinson Cru- 
soe; the finding of employment was the last thing that troubled them. 

If men cannot find an employer, why can they not employ themselves? 
Simply because they are shut out from the element on which human labor 
can alone be exerted; men are compelled to compete with each other for 
the wages of an employer, because they have been robbed of the natural 
opportunities of employing themselves; because they cannot find a piece of 
God's world on which to work without paying some other human creature 
for the privilege. 

I do not mean to say that, even after you had set right this fundamental 
injustice, there would not be many things to do; but this I do mean to say, 
that our treatment of land lies at the bottom of all social questions. This 
I do mean to say, that, do what you please, reform as you may, you never 
can get rid of widespread poverty so long as the element on which, and 
from which, all men must live is made the private property of some men. 
It is utterly impossible. Reform government— get taxes down to the minimum 
—build railways; institute cooperative stores; divide profits, if you choose, 
between employers and employed— and what will be the result? The result 
will be that land will increase in value— that will be the result— that and 
nothing else. Experience shows this. Do not all improvements simply in- 
crease the value of land— the price that some must pay others for the 
privilege of living? 

Consider the matter. I say it with all reverence, and merely say it because 
I wish to impress a truth upon your minds— it is utterly impossible, so long 
as His laws are what they are, that God Himself could relieve poverty— 
utterly impossible. Think of it, and you will see. Men pray to the Almighty 
to relieve poverty. But poverty comes not from God's laws— it is blasphemy 
of the worst kind to say that; it comes from man's injustice to his fellows. 
Supposing the Almighty were to hear the prayer, how could He carry out 



252 RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 

the request, so long as His laws are what they are? Consider— the Almighty 
gives us nothing of the things that constitute wealth; He merely gives us 
the raw material, which must be utilized by man to produce wealth. Does 
He not give us enough of that now? How could He relieve poverty even 
if He were to give us more? Supposing, in answer to these prayers, He were 
to increase the power of the sun, or the virtues of the soil? Supposing He 
were to make plants more prolific, or animals to produce after their kind 
more abundantly? Who would get the benefit of it? Take a country where 
land is completely monopolized, as it is in most of the civilized countries— 
who would get the benefit of it? Simply the landowners. And even if God, 
in answer to prayer, were to send down out of the heavens those things 
that men require, who would get the benefit? 

In the Old Testament we are told that, when the Israelites journeyed 
through the desert, they were hungered, and that God sent down out of 
the heavens— manna. There was enough for all of them, and they all took 
it and were relieved. But, supposing that desert had been held as private 
property, as the soil of Great Britain is held; as the soil even of our new 
States is being held. Supposing that one of the Israelites had a square mile, 
and another one had twenty square miles, and another one had a hundred 
square miles, and the great majority of the Israelites did not have enough 
to set the soles of their feet upon, which they could call their own— what 
would become of the manna? What good would it have done to the 
majority? Not a whit. Though God had sent down manna enough for all, 
that manna would have been the property of the landholders; they would 
have employed some of the others, perhaps, to gather it up in heaps for 
them, and would have sold it to the hungry brethren. Consider it: this 
purchase and sale of manna might have gone on until the majority of 
the Israelites had given up all they had, even to the clothes off their backs. 
What then? Well, then they would not have had anything left with which 
to buy manna, and the consequence would have been that while they went 
hungry the manna would be lying in great heaps, and the landowners 
would be complaining about the over-production of manna. There would 
have been a great harvest of manna and hungry people, just precisely the 
phenomenon that we see today. 

I cannot go over all the points I would like to; but I wish to call your 
attention to the utter absurdity of private property in land! Why, consider 
it— the idea of a man selling the earth— the earth, our common mother. A 
man selling that which no man produced. A man passing title from one 
generation to another. Why, it is the most absurd thing in the world. Did 
you ever think of this? What right has a dead man to land? For whom 
was this earth created? It was created for the living, certainly not for the 
dead. Well, now, we treat it as though it was created for the dead. Where do 



HENRY GEORGE 253 

our land titles come from"? They come from men who, for the most part, 
have passed and gone. Here, in this new country, you get a little nearer 
the original source; but go to the Eastern States, and go over the Atlantic. 
There you may clearly see the power that comes from land ownership. 



What is the reason for this overcrowding of cities? There is no natural 
reason. Take New York, one-half of its area is not built upon. Why, then, 
must people crowd together as they do there? Simply because of private 
ownership of land. There is plenty of room to build houses, and plenty of 
people who want to build houses, but before anybody can build a house 
a blackmail price must be paid to some dog-in-the-manger. It costs, in many 
cases, more to get vacant ground upon which to build a house than it does 
to build the house. And then what happens to the man who pays this 
blackmail and builds a house? Down comes the tax-gatherer and fines him 
for building the house. 

It is so all over the United States— the men who improve, the men who 
turn the prairie into farms, and the desert into gardens, the men who 
beautify your cities, are taxed and fined for having done these things. Now, 
nothing is clearer than that the people of New York want more houses; and 
I think that even here in Burlington you could get along with more houses. 
Why, then, should you fine a man that builds one? Look all over this 
country— the bulk of the taxation rests upon the improver; the man who 
puts up a building or establishes a factory, or cultivates a farm, he is taxed 
for it; and not merely taxed for it, but I think, in nine cases out of ten, 
the land which he uses, the bare land, is taxed more than the adjoining lot, 
or the adjoining 160 acres that some speculator is holding as a mere dog- 
in-the-manger, not using it himself, and not allowing anybody else to use it. 

I am talking too long; but let me, in a few words, point out the way of 
getting rid of land monopoly, securing the right of all to the elements which 
are necessary for life. We could not divide the land. In a rude state of 
society, as among the ancient Hebrews, giving each family its lot, and 
making it inalienable, we might secure something like equality. But in a 
complex civilization that will not suffice. It is not, however, necessary to 
divide up the land. All that is necessary is to divide up the income that 
comes from the land. In that way we can secure absolute equality; nor 
could the adoption of this principle involve any rude shock or violent change. 
It can be brought about gradually and easily by abolishing the taxes that 
now rest upon capital, labor, and improvements, and raising all our public 
revenues by the taxation of land values; and the longer you think of it the 
clearer you will see that in every possible way it will be a benefit. 

Now, supposing we should abolish all other taxes, direct and indirect, 



254 



RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIAL PROTEST 



substituting for them a tax upon land values, what would be the effect? In 
the first place, it would be to kill speculative values. It would be to remove 
from the newer parts of the country the bulk of the taxation, and put it on 
the richer parts. It would be to exempt the pioneer from taxation, and make 
the larger cities pay more of it. It would be to relieve energy and enterprise, 
capital and labor, from all those burdens that now bear upon them. What 
a start that would give to production! In the second place, we could, from 
the value of land, not merely pay all the present expenses of government, but 
we could do infinitely more. In the city of San Francisco, James Lick left a 
few blocks of ground to be used for public purposes there, and the rent 
amounts to so much, that out of it will be built the largest telescope in the 
world, large public baths, and other public buildings, and various costly 
monuments. If, instead of these few blocks, the whole value of the land 
upon which the city is built had accrued to San Francisco, what could 
she not do? 

So in this little town, where land values are very low as compared with 
such cities as Chicago and San Francisco, you could do many things for 
mutual benefit and public improvement did you appropriate to public pur- 
poses the land values that now go to individuals. You could have a great 
free library; you could have an art gallery; you could get yourselves a public 
park, a magnificent public park, too. You have here one of the finest 
natural sites for a beautiful town that I know of, and I have traveled much. 
You might make on this site a city that it would be a pleasure to live in. 
You will not, as you go now— oh! no! Why, the very fact that you have a 
magnificent view here will cause somebody to hold on all the more tightly 
to the land that commands this view, and charge higher prices for it. The 
State of New York wants to buy a strip of land so as to enable the people 
to see the Niagara, but what a price she must pay for it. Look at all the 
great cities; in Philadelphia, for instance, in order to build their great city 
hall they had to block up the only two wide streets they had in the city. 
Everywhere you go you may see how private property in land prevents 
public as well as private improvement. 

But I have no time to enter further into details. I can only ask you to 
think upon this thing, and the more you will see its desirability. As an 
English friend of mine puts it, "No taxes and a pension for everybody;" 
and why should it not be? To take land values for public purposes is not 
really to impose a tax, but to take for public purposes a value created by the 
community. And out of the fund which would thus accrue from the com- 
mon property, we might, without degradation to anybody, provide enough 
to actually secure from want all who were deprived of their natural pro- 
tectors, or met with accident; or any man who should grow so old that he 
could not work. All prating that is heard from some quarters about its hurt- 



HENRY GEORGE 255 

ing the common people to give them what they do not work for is humbug. 
The truth is, that anything that injures self-respect, degrades, does harm; 
but if you give it as a right, as something to which every citizen is entitled, 
it does not degrade. Charity schools do degrade the children that are sent 
to them, but public schools do not. 

But all such benefits as these, while great, would be incidental. The 
great thing would be that the reform I propose would tend to open op- 
portunities to labor and enable men to provide employment for themselves. 
That is the great advantage. We should gain the enormous productive power 
that is going to waste all over the country, the power of idle hands that 
would gladly be at work. And that removed, then you would see wages begin 
to mount. It is not that everyone would turn farmer, or everyone build 
himself a house if he had an opportunity for doing so, but so many could, 
and would, as to relieve the pressure on the labor market and provide em- 
ployment for all others. And as wages mounted to the higher levels then 
you would see the productive power increased. The country where wages 
are high is the country of greatest productive power. Where wages are highest 
there will invention be most active; there will labor be most intelligent; 
there will be the greatest yield for the expenditure of exertion. The more you 
think of it the more clearly you will see what I say is true. I cannot hope 
to convince you in talking for an hour or two, but I shall be content if I 
shall put you upon inquiry. Think for yourselves; ask yourselves whether 
this widespread fact of poverty is not a crime, and a crime for which every- 
one of us, man and woman, who does not do what he or she can do to call 
attention to it and to do away with it, is responsible. 



THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. 
THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 



In June, 1889, the North American Review carried an 
article by Andrew Carnegie called "Wealth." At the 
promptings of Gladstone it was republished in England 
by the Pall Mall Budget and christened the "Gospel of 
Wealth." 1 In 1900 sundry Carnegie articles were repub- 
lished in book form under the title The Gospel of Wealth. 

Carnegie, who had risen from bobbin boy to modern 
Croesus, was one of the most enlightened and certainly 
the most literate of the capitalist princes. Primitives such 
as Jim Fiske and jay Gould were "grab and hold" barons, 
but Carnegie elevated the pursuit of wealth to the status 
of a social philosophy by coupling it to a doctrine of 
stewardship. His own philanthropies lent authority to his 
injunctions. 

Carnegie's doctrine was well-timed. Like the mansions 
of millionaires, city slums and depressed farm areas were 
becoming uncomfortably conspicuous. Reformers roamed 
about, unsettling people with their insistent question as 
to how it was possible for personal acquisitiveness to re- 
sult in the common good. In "Wealth" Carnegie acknowl- 
edged that the problem of the age was "to bind together 
the rich and poor in harmonious relationship." His an- 
swer, in part, was merely a restatement of folk philosophy 
composed of commonplace themes: Despite imperfections, 

1 Andrew Carnegie, Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Mif- 
flin Company, 1920), footnote, p. 255. 

256 



THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 257 

ours is the best world yet; collectivist schemes are hut the 
dreams of drones; the pillars of modern society are "In- 
dividualism, Private Property, the Law of Accumulation, 
and the Law of Competition." Carnegie went on, how- 
ever, to urge the rich to practice unostentatious living and 
generous giving for civic purposes. They were to be 
cautious trustees of the poor, exercising care lest their 
charities encourage the drunkard in his drunkenness and 
the slothful in his sloth. A judicious administration of 
wealth would enable the rich and the poor to live in social 
harmony. 

The metaphor "gospel of wealth" forced into alliance 
two traditionally alien interests, but its unintended irony 
escaped mammon-minded children of the Gilded Age. 
And well it might, for the churches themselves acceded to 
the established order either by maintaining a rigid posture 
of otherworldliness or by buttressing the values of middle 
and upper economic classes with the rationalizations of 
vulgarized Calvinism. The ultimate endorsement came 
from Bishop William Lawrence of Massachusetts, who 
insisted that in the long run wealth comes only to the 
moral man. "Godliness," he declared, "is in league with 
riches. . . . Material prosperity is helping to make the 
national character sweeter, more joyous, more unselfish, 
more Christlike." 2 

The new gospel's foremost evangelist was Russell Her- 
man Conwell. Conwell was educated at Yale, served in 
the Union army, was businessman, reporter, and lawyer 
before he became a minister. While working the Lord's 
vineyard in Lexington, Massachusetts, he was beseeched 
to shore up a dwindling Baptist congregation in Philadel- 
phia. The congregation could pay him a salary of only 
$800, so he made them a sporting proposition. Each time 
he doubled the membership, they would double his 

2 "The Relation of Wealth to Morals," World's Work, I 
(1901), pp. 286-292. 



258 THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 

salary. Unwittingly the congregation agreed, then cried 
for renegotiation when Conwell speedily boosted his 
salary to $10,000 annually. People flocked to hear him. 
He built a huge modern Baptist Temple. For young men 
eager to get ahead, he organized and taught night classes 
—the beginnings of Temple University. While making a 
dazzling local reputation during the eighties, the inde- 
fatigable Conwell was building simultaneously a national 
reputation as a lecturer. 

Conwell was not a single speech man, yet he was best 
known to his contemporaries, as he is best remembered 
today, for his one lecture, "Acres of Diamonds." He de- 
livered this speech over six thousand times to audiences 
in America and abroad. Veterans of the Chautauqua 
circuit called the lecture "Old Dependable/' and noted 
that it "was studied, analyzed, marked off into sections, 
and its every element weighed and measured. The phil- 
osophy was imitated and its appeal duplicated in countless 
orations that rang from coast to coast, from Mexico to 
Canada." 3 Its Horatio Alger message of Upward and On- 
ward inspired ambition in hundreds of thousands of 
youths. "Acres of Diamonds" became so prized an article 
in American life that a celebration was staged in Phila- 
delphia in 1914. to honor Conwell' s $oooth presentation. 
Nine state governors joined in a national committee to 
sponsor the event. Had Conwell chosen to retain his fees, 
the lecture would easily have made him a millionaire. 
But true to the "gospel," he spent the income subsidizing 
the college education of young men. 

The lecture was always narrative and anecdotal, always 
opened with the same exotic master example that set the 
theme, which was then amplified by a string of success 
stories. Examples varied with the audience, and the 
speech could be lengthened or shortened at will. But the 

3 Victoria and Robert O. Case, We Called It Culture (Garden 
City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1948), pp. 62-63. 



THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 259 

message never varied: "I say that you ought to get rich, 
and it is your duty to get rich." Critics asked Conwell, 
"Why don't you preach the gospel instead of preaching 
about mans making money?" He answered forthrightly: 
"Because to make money honestly is to preach the gospel." 
Conwell took pains to point out that money must he 
gained honestly or it would he a withering curse, and like 
Bishop Lawrence, he reassured his middle-class audiences 
on the inexorable connection between wealth and moral- 
ity: ". . . ninety-eight out of one-hundred of the rich men 
of America are honest. That is why they are rich." It was 
right to sympathize with the poor, "but the number of 
poor who are to be sympathized with is very small. To 
sympathize with a man whom God has punished for his 
sins, thus to help him when God would still continue a 
just punishment, is to do wrong. . . " Having entered his 
caution, Conwell extolled wealth as power for good. Thus 
he fired the ambitions of those who still hoped for wealth 
and conferred the blessings of rectitude on those who 
possessed it. Although Conwell was not the theologian of 
the gospel of wealth, he was its most effective and durable 
circuit-rider. 

In the early decades of the industrial revolution, ortho- 
dox churches gave tacit support to acquisitiveness by 
single-minded concentration upon rescuing souls from 
the fiery pits and readying them for eternal bliss. This 
world was but a prelude to the next, its trials and sorrows 
a proving ground. Insofar as orthodoxy spoke out on the 
here and now, it defended the emery wheel of competi- 
tion for honing character. Yet by the end of the century 
a counterrevolution called the Social Gospel penetrated 
almost every denomination and offered vigorous challenge 
to the gospel of wealth. 

The Social Gospel movement was indigenous, largely 
Protestant, and reformist. As a movement it originated in 
the eighteen seventies and flourished vigorously in the 



260 THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 

Progressive Era. Its American antecedents included the 
liberal doctrines and preachings of William Ellery Chan- 
ning, Theodore Parker, Horace Bushnell, and others. It 
took root first among Unitarians, Congregationalists, and 
Episcopalians, hut as the movement assumed an evangel- 
istic character, it grew among Baptists, Methodists, and 
other denominations of this heritage. 

The Social Gospel was a protest against social Might in 
an industrial age. It laid hare the growing irrelevance of 
churches to the life of the masses, and the palpable con- 
tradictions between the ethical teachings of Jesus and a 
society that was ruled by the harsh Spencerian doctrine 
of fang and claw. In their reconsideration of religion and 
society, Social Gospelers drew upon scriptural or Higher 
Criticism, scientific thought, sociology and economics, and 
the social critiques of secular reformers. Their achieve- 
ments included an impressive body of criticism on the 
ethics and practices of unregulated capitalism; a searching 
critique of conventional Christianity; a revised theology 
that postulated the immanence of God, corporate as well 
as personal sin, and salvation as a stage in history rather 
than a stage beyond history; an active program of propa- 
ganda and reform. 

Washington Gladden, commonly considered "the 
father" of the Social Gospel movement, typified wide- 
spread partiality among Social Gospelers for moderate and 
piecemeal reform. A Congregationalist minister in Colum- 
bus, Ohio, Gladden championed particularly the cause of 
labor at a time when conservative church publications 
were shocked by his theory that a company had an obli- 
gation to confer with employees on conditions of labor 
and wages. Gladden was enormously effective with prac- 
tical reforms on many fronts while at the same time he 
pressed upon parishioners and the public the larger goal 
of a modified capitalism based on brotherhood. 

The more radical wing of the Social Gospel movement 
was represented by George Davis Herron. An obscure 



THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 26 1 

Congregational minister, he was catapulted into promi- 
nence by his lecture, "The Message of Jesus to Men of 
Wealth," given to the Minnesota Congregational Club in 
1890. It was a sharp attack upon unlimited individualism 
and competition, self-interest and acquisitiveness. He 
challenged his audience to carry the Sermon on the 
Mount into the transactions of the market-place. 

Herrons "Message of Jesus" foreshadowed and stimu- 
lated experiments in preaching applied Christianity. Out 
in Topeka, Kansas, the Reverend Charles M. Sheldon 
was groping for a means of heightening the impact of 
the Social Gospel message. In 1891 he began to experi- 
ment with serialized sermon stories that depicted the 
hopeless struggles of the disinherited. Departing from 
customary abstractions on social injustice, he dramatized 
its consequences in the lives of individuals. After deliver- 
ing his sermon stories, Sheldon sought a wider audience 
by publishing them. His most successful work, In His 
Steps (1896), enjoyed a sensational sale. In it Sheldon 
urged each parishioner, when faced with a difficult de- 
cision between choices, to ask himself, "What would 
Jesus do?" The book recounts the revolutionary conse- 
quences in the lives of those who asked the question and 
then followed in His steps. In similar vein, though deal- 
ing in fact instead of fiction, William T. Stead, an Eng- 
lish journalist, organized and spoke to a mass meeting on 
the question, "If Christ came to Chicago today, what 
would He think of it?" Stead made a shattering expose of 
crime, poverty, drunkenness, prostitution, black lists, tax- 
dodging— a veritable decalogue of evil. He proposed that 
"a living faith in Citizen Christ would lead directly to the 
civic and social regeneration of Chicago." 4 " 

In addition to inspiring a pulpit, platform, and literary 

4 Ralph Gabriel, The Course of American Democratic Thought 
(New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1940), pp. 308-330; 
Charles H. Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American 
Protestantism QNew Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), pp. 
140-148. 



262 



THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. THE SOCIAL GOSPEL 

genre, Herron was swept up in a speaking campaign for 
social regeneration and reconstruction. During the eight- 
een-nineties, invitations poured in from everywhere. As 
he talked on, his views became more radical, controversy 
gathered around him, and many of his engagements 
ended in stormy encounters. Ultimately Herron rejected 
capitalism and espoused socialism as the Christian answer 
to the ills of the age, and in so doing isolated himself 
from the mainstream of Social Gospel thought and action. 
Henry George, himself a religious man, charged that 
churches were in alliance with social injustice. Had he 
lived on into the twentieth centry, undoubtedly he would 
have withdrawn his stricture. In 19 12 the Federal Council 
of Churches, an outgrowth of the Social Gospel, adopted 
a sixteen-point platform that exhibited social conscious- 
ness in every point. 5 Not only had Protestantism regained 
its relevance to the modern world, but the ideals and goals 
of Social Gospelers were fostered by Theodore Roosevelt, 
Woodrow Wilson, and a host of lesser liberals in the 
Progressive Era. 



5 Ibid., pp. 316-317. 



Acres of Diamonds 

RUSSELL HERMAN CONWELL 



Born, South Worthington, Massachusetts, February 15, 
1843; died, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, December 6, 
1925. Educated at Wilbraham Academy and Yale. Officer 
in Union Army. Admitted to bar, 1865. Practiced law in 
Minneapolis and Boston. Served Minnesota as immigra- 
tion agent in Germany. Founded the Daily Chronicle in 
Minneapolis. Ordained as Baptist minister, 1879. Held 
pastorates in Lexington, Massachusetts, and Philadelphia. 
Founder and first president of Temple University. Popu- 
lar lecturer, preacher, essayist, and biographer. 



w 



hen going down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers 
many years ago with a party of English travelers I 
found myself under the direction of an old Arab guide whom we hired up at 
Bagdad, and I have often thought how that guide resembled our barbers in 
certain mental characteristics. He thought that it was not only his duty to 
guide us down those rivers, and do what he was paid for doing, but also to 
entertain us with stories curious and weird, ancient and modern, strange and 
familiar. Many of them I have forgotten, and I am glad I have, but there is 
one I shall never forget. 

The old guide was leading my camel by its halter along the banks of those 
ancient rivers, and he told me story after story until I grew weary of his 
story-telling and ceased to listen. I have never been irritated with that guide 

Probably first delivered at Springfield, Massachusetts, 1870, at a reunion of ConwelTs 
regiment. Condensed version first published as a text in Conwell's Gleams of Grace 
(1887), based on a presentation at the Amphitheatre, Chautauqua, New York, 
August 3, 1886. Text reproduced here (approximately the first half of the lecture) is 
from Russell H. Conwell, Acres of Diamonds, with biography by Robert Shackleton 
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 191 5), pp. 3-59. 

263 



264 THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. SOCIAL GOSPEL 

when he lost his temper as I ceased listening. But I remember that he took 
off his Turkish cap and swung it in a circle to get my attention. I could see 
it through the corner of my eye, but I determined not to look straight at him 
for fear he would tell another story. But although I am not a woman, I did 
finally look, and as soon as I did he went right into another story. 

Said he, "I will tell you a story now which I reserve for my particular 
friends." When he emphasized the words "particular friends/' I listened, and 
I have ever been glad I did. I really feel devoutly thankful, that there are 
1,674 young men who have been carried through college by this lecture who 
are also glad that I did listen. The old guide told me that there once lived 
not far from the River Indus an ancient Persian by the name of Ali Hafed. 
He said that Ali Hafed owned a very large farm, that he had orchards, grain- 
fields, and gardens; that he had money at interest, and was a wealthy and 
contented man. He was contented because he was wealthy, and wealthy 
because he was contented. One day there visited that old Persian farmer one 
of those ancient Buddhist priests, one of the wise men of the East. He sat 
down by the fire and told the old farmer how this world of ours was made. 
He said that this world was once a mere bank of fog, and that the Almighty 
thrust His finger into this bank of fog, and began slowly to move His finger 
around, increasing the speed until at last He whirled this bank of fog into 
a solid ball of fire. Then it went rolling through the universe, burning its 
way through other banks of fog, and condensed the moisture without, until 
it fell in floods of rain upon its hot surface, and cooled the outward crust. 
Then the internal fires bursting outward through the crust threw up the 
mountains and hills, the valleys, the plains and prairies of this wonderful 
world of ours. If this internal molten mass came bursting out and cooled 
very quickly it became granite; less quickly cooper, less quickly silver, less 
quickly gold, and, after gold, diamonds were made. 

Said the old priest, "A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight." Now that 
is literally scientifically true, that a diamond is an actual deposit of carbon 
from the sun. The old priest told Ali Hafed that if he had one diamond the 
size of his thumb he could purchase the country, and if he had a mine of 
diamonds he could place his children upon thrones through the influence of 
their great wealth. 

Ali Hafed heard all about diamonds, how much they were worth, and went 
to his bed that night a poor man. He had not lost anything, but he was poor 
because he was discontented, and discontented because he feared he was 
poor. He said, "I want a mine of diamonds," and he lay awake all night. 

Early in the morning he sought out the priest. I know by experience that 
a priest is very cross when awakened early in the morning, and when he 
shook that old priest out of his dreams, Ali Hafed said to him: 

"Will you tell me where I can find diamonds?" 






RUSSELL HERMAN CONWELL 265 

"Diamonds! What do you want with diamonds?" "Why, I wish to be 
immensely rich." "Well, then, go along and find them. That is all you have 
to do; go and find them, and then you have them." "But I don't know where 
to go." "Well, if you will find a river that runs through white sands, between 
high mountains, in those white sands you will always find diamonds." "I 
don't believe there is any such river." "Oh yes, there are plenty of them. All 
you have to do is to go and find them, and then you have them." Said Ali 
Hafed, "I will go." 

So he sold his farm, collected his money, left his family in charge of a 
neighbor, and away he went in search of diamonds. He began his search, 
very properly to my mind, at the Mountains of the Moon. Afterward he 
came around into Palestine, then wandered on into Europe, and at last 
when his money was all spent and he was in rags, wretchedness, and poverty, 
he stood on the shore of that bay at Barcelona, in Spain, when a great tidal 
wave came rolling in between the pillars of Hercules, and the poor, afflicted, 
suffering, dying man could not resist the awful temptation to cast himself 
into that incoming tide, and he sank beneath its foaming crest, never to rise 
in this life again. 

When that old guide had told me that awfully sad story he stopped the 
camel I was riding on and went back to fix the baggage that was coming 
off another camel, and I had an opportunity to muse over his story while he 
was gone. I remember saying to myself, "Why did he reserve that story for 
his particular friends'?" There seemed to be no beginning, no middle, no 
end, nothing to it. That was the first story I had ever heard told in my life, 
and would be the first one I ever read, in which the hero was killed in the 
first chapter. I had but one chapter of that story, and the hero was dead. 

When the guide came back and took up the halter of my camel, he went 
right ahead with the story, into the second chapter, just as though there had 
been no break. The man who purchased Ali Hafed's farm one day led his 
camel into the garden to drink, and as that camel put its nose into the shallow 
water of that garden brook, Ali Hafed's successor noticed a curious flash of 
light from the white sands of the stream. He pulled out a black stone having 
an eye of light reflecting all the hues of the rainbow. He took the pebble 
into the house and put it on the mantel which covers the central fires, and 
forgot all about it. 

A few days later this same old priest came in to visit Ali Hafed's successor, 
and the moment he opened that drawing-room door he saw that flash of light 
on the mantel, and he rushed up to it, and shouted: "Here is a diamond! 
Has Ali Hafed returned?" "Oh no, Ali Hafed has not returned, and that is 
not a diamond. That is nothing but a stone we found right out here in our 
own garden." "But," said the priest, "I tell you I know a diamond when I 
see it. I know positively that is a diamond." 



266 



THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. SOCIAL GOSPEL 



Then together they rushed out into that old garden and stirred up the 
white sands with their fingers, and lo! there came up other more beautiful 
and valuable gems than the first. "Thus," said the guide to me, and, friends, 
it is historically true, "was discovered the diamond-mine of Golconda, the 
most magnificent diamond-mine in all the history of mankind, excelling the 
Kimberly itself. The Kohinoor, and the Orloff of the crown jewels of Eng- 
land and Russia, the largest on earth, came from that mine." 

When that old Arab guide told me the second chapter of his story, he 
then took off his Turkish cap and swung it around in the air again to get my 
attention to the moral. Those Arab guides have morals to their stories, al- 
though they are not always moral. As he swung his hat, he said to me, "Had 
Ali Hafed remained at home and dug in his own cellar, or underneath his 
own wheat-fields, or in his own garden, instead of wretchedness, starvation, 
and death by suicide in a strange land, he would have had 'acres of diamonds.' 
For every acre of that old farm, yes, every shovelful, afterward revealed gems 
which since have decorated the crowns of monarchs." 

When he had added the moral to his story I saw why he reserved it for 
"his particular friends." But I did not tell him I could see it. It was that mean 
old Arab's way of going around a thing like a lawyer, to say indirectly what 
he did not dare say directly, that "in his private opinion there was a certain 
young man then traveling down the Tigris River that might better be at 
home in America." I did not tell him I could see that, but I told him his story 
reminded me of one, and I told it to him quick, and I think I will tell it to 
you. 

I told him of a man out in California in 1847, who owned a ranch. He 
heard they had discovered gold in southern California, and so with a passion 
for gold he sold his ranch to Colonel Sutter, and away he went, never to 
come back. Colonel Sutter put a mill upon a stream that ran through that 
ranch, and one day his little girl brought some wet sand from the raceway 
into their home and sifted it through her fingers before the fire, and in that 
falling sand a visitor saw the first shining scales of real gold that were ever 
discovered in California. The man who had owned that ranch wanted gold, 
and he could have secured it for the mere taking. Indeed, thirty-eight mil- 
lions of dollars has been taken out of a very few acres since then. About 
eight years ago I delivered this lecture in a city that stands on that farm, 
and they told me that a one-third owner for years and years had been getting 
one hundred and twenty dollars in gold every fifteen minutes, sleeping or 
waking, without taxation. You and I would enjoy an income like that— if 
we didn't have to pay an income tax. 

But a better illustration really than that occurred here in our own Penn- 
sylvania. If there is anything I enjoy above another on the platform, it is 
to get one of these German audiences in Pennsylvania before me, and fire 



RUSSELL HERMAN CONWELL 267 

that at them, and I enjoy it to-night. There was a man living in Pennsylvania, 
not unlike some Pennsylvanians you have seen, who owned a farm, and he 
did with that farm just what I should do with a farm if I owned one in 
Pennsylvania— he sold it. But before he sold it he decided to secure employ- 
ment collecting coal-oil for his cousin, who was in the business in Canada, 
where they first discovered oil on this continent. They dipped it from the 
running streams at that early time. So this Pennsylvania farmer wrote to his 
cousin asking for employment. You see, friends, this farmer was not alto- 
gether a foolish man. No, he was not. He did not leave his farm until he 
had something else to do. Of all the simpletons the stars shine on I don't know 
of a worse one than the man who leaves one joh hefore he has gotten another. 
That has especial reference to my profession, and has no reference whatever 
to a man seeking a divorce. When he wrote to his cousin for employment, 
his cousin replied, "I cannot engage you because you know nothing about 
the oil business/' 

Well, then the old farmer said, "I will know," and with most commendable 
zeal (characteristic of the students of Temple University) he set himself at 
the study of the whole subject. He began away back at the second day of 
God's creation when this world was covered thick and deep with that rich 
vegetation which since has turned to the primitive beds of coal. He studied 
the subject until he found that the drainings really of those rich beds of coal 
furnished the coal-oil that was worth pumping, and then he found how it 
came up with the living springs. He studied until he knew what it looked 
like, smelled like, tasted like, and how to refine it. Now said he in his letter 
to his cousin, "I understand the oil business." His cousin anwered, "All right, 
come on." 

So he sold his farm, according to the county record, for $833 (even money, 
"no cents"). He had scarcely gone from that place before the man who 
purchased the spot went out to arrange for the watering of the cattle. He 
found the previous owner had gone out years before and put a plank across 
the brook back of the barn, edgewise into the surface of the water just a 
few inches. The purpose of that plank at that sharp angle across the brook 
was to throw over to the other bank a dreadful-looking scum through which 
the cattle would not put their noses. But with that plank there to throw it 
all over to one side, the cattle would drink below, and thus that man who had 
gone to Canada had been himself damming back for twenty-three years a 
flood of coal-oil which the state geologists of Pennsylvania declared to us 
ten years later was even then worth a hundred millions of dollars to our 
state, and four years ago our geologist declared the discovery to be worth to 
our state a thousand millions of dollars. The man who owned that territory 
on which the city of Titusville now stands, and those Pleasantville valleys, 
had studied the subject from the second day of God's creation clear down to 



268 THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. SOCIAL GOSPEL 

the present time. He studied it until he knew all about it, and yet he is said 
to have sold the whole of it for $833, and again I say, "no sense." 

But I need another illustration. I found it in Massachusetts, and I am 
sorry I did because that is the state I came from. This young man in Massa- 
chusetts furnishes just another phase of my thought. He went to Yale College 
and studied mines and mining, and became such an adept as a mining 
engineer that he was employed by the authorities of the university to train 
students who were behind their classes. During his senior year he earned $15 
a week for doing that work. When he graduated they raised his pay from 
$15 to $45 a week, and offered him a professorship, and as soon as they did 
he went right home to his mother. If they had raised that hoy's fay from $15 
to $15.60 he would have stayed and heen frond of the flace, hut when they 
fut it uf to $45 at one leaf, he said, "Mother, I won't work for $45 a week. 
The idea of a man with a hrain like mine working for $45 a week! Let's go 
out in California and stake out gold-mines and silver-mines, and be im- 
mensely rich." 

Said his mother, "Now, Charlie, it is just as well to be happy as it is to 
be rich." 

"Yes," said Charlie, "but it is just as well to be rich and happy, too." And 
they were both right about it. As he was an only son and she a widow, of 
course he had his way. They always do. 

They sold out in Massachusetts, and instead of going to California they 
went to Wisconsin, where he went into the employ of the Superior Copper 
Mining Company at $15 a week again, but with the proviso in his contract 
that he should have an interest in any mines he should discover for the com- 
pany. I don't believe he ever discovered a mine, and if I am looking in the 
face of any stockholder of that copper company you wish he had discovered 
something or other. I have friends who are not here because they could not 
afford a ticket, who did have stock in that company at the time this young 
man was employed there. This young man went out there, and I have not 
heard a word from him. I don't know what became of him, and I don't know 
whether he found any mines or not, but I don't believe he ever did. 

But I do know the other end of the line. He had scarcely gotten out of 
the old homestead before the succeeding owner went out to dig potatoes. 
The potatoes were already growing in the ground when he bought the farm, 
and as the old farmer was bringing in a basket of potatoes it hugged very 
tight between the ends of the stone fence. You know in Massachusetts our 
farms are nearly all stone wall. There you are obliged to be very economical 
of front gateways in order to have some place to put the stone. When that 
basket hugged so tight he set it down on the ground, and then dragged on 
one side, and pulled on the other side, and as he was dragging that basket 
through this farmer noticed in the upper and outer corner of that stone wall, 



RUSSELL HERMAN CONWELL 269 

right next the gate, a block of native silver eight inches square. That professor 
of mines, mining, and mineralogy who knew so much about the subject that 
he would not work for $45 a week, when he sold that homestead in Massa- 
chusetts sat right on that silver to make the bargain. He was born on that 
homestead, was brought up there, and had gone back and forth rubbing the 
stone with his sleeve until it reflected his countenance, and seemed to say, 
"Here is a hundred thousand dollars right down here just for the taking." 
But he would not take it. It was in a home in Newburyport, Massachusetts, 
and there was no silver there, all away off— well, I don't know where, and 
he did not, but somewhere else, and he was a professor of mineralogy. 

My friends, that mistake is very universally made, and why should we even 
smile at him. I often wonder what has become of him. I do not know at all, 
but I will tell you what I "guess" as a Yankee. I guess that he sits out there 
by his fireside to-night with his friends gathered around him, and he is saying 
to them something like this: "Do you know that man Con well who lives in 
Philadelphia?" "Oh yes, I have heard of him." "Do you know that man Jones 
that lives in Philadelphia?" "Yes, I have heard of him, too." 

Then he begins to laugh, and shakes his sides, and says to his friends, 
"Well, they have done just the same thing I did, precisely"— and that spoils 
the whole joke, for you and I have done the same thing he did, and while 
we sit here and laugh at him he has a better right to sit out there and laugh 
at us. I know I have made the same mistakes, but, of course, that does not 
make any difference, because we don't expect the same man to preach and 
practise, too. 

As I come here to-night and look around this audience I am seeing again 
what through these fifty years I have continually seen— men that are making 
precisely that same mistake. I often wish I could see the younger people, 
and would that the Academy had been filled to-night with our high-school 
scholars and our grammar-school scholars, that I could have them to talk 
to. While I would have preferred such an audience as that, because they are 
most susceptible, as they have not grown up into their prejudices as we 
have, they have not gotten into any custom that they cannot break, they 
have not met with any failures as we have; and while I could perhaps do 
such an audience as that more good than I can do grown-up people, yet I 
will do the best I can with the material I have. I say to you that you have 
"acres of diamonds" in Philadelphia right where you now live. "Oh," but 
you will say, "you cannot know much about your city if you think there 
are any acres of diamonds' here." 

I was greatly interested in that account in the newspaper of the young man 
who found that diamond in North Carolina. It was one of the purest dia- 
monds that has ever been discovered, and it has several predecessors near 
the same locality. I went to a distinguished professor in mineralogy and asked 



270 THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. SOCIAL GOSPEL 

him where he thought those diamonds came from. The professor secured the 
map of the geologic formations of our continent, and traced it. He said it 
went either through the underlying carboniferous strata adapted for such 
production, westward through Ohio and the Mississippi, or in more probabil- 
ity came eastward through Virginia and up the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. 
It is a fact that the diamonds were there, for they have been discovered and 
sold; and that they were carried down there during the drift period, from 
some northern locality. Now who can say but some person going down with 
his drill in Philadelphia will find some trace of a diamond-mine yet down 
here? Oh, friends! you cannot say that you are not over one of the greatest 
diamond-mines in the world, for such a diamond as that only comes from 
the most profitable mines that are found on earth. 

But it serves simply to illustrate my thought, which I emphasize by saying 
if you do not have the actual diamond-mines literally you have all that they 
would be good for to you. Because now that the Queen of England has given 
the greatest compliment ever conferred upon American woman for her attire 
because she did not appear with any jewels at all at the late reception in 
England, it has almost done away with the use of diamonds anyhow. All you 
would care for would be the few you would wear if you wish to be modest, 
and the rest you would sell for money. 

Now then, I say again that the opportunity to get rich, to attain unto great 
wealth, is here in Philadelphia now, within the reach of almost every man 
and woman who hears me speak to-night, and I mean just what I say. I have 
not come to this platform even under these circumstances to recite something 
to you. I have come to tell you what in God's sight I believe to be the truth, 
and if the years of life have been of any value to me in the attainment of 
common sense, I know I am right; that the men and women sitting here, 
who found it difficult perhaps to buy a ticket to this lecture or gathering 
to-night, have within their reach "acres of diamonds," opportunities to get 
largely wealthy. There never was a place on earth more adapted than the 
city of Philadelphia to-day, and never in the history of the world did a poor 
man without capital have such an opportunity to get rich quickly and 
honestly as he has now in our city. I say it is the truth, and I want you to 
accept it as such; for if you think I have come to simply recite something, 
then I would better not be here. I have no time to waste in any such talk, 
but to say the things I believe, and unless some of you get richer for what 
I am saying to-night my time is wasted. 

I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich. How many 
of my pious brethren say to me, "Do you, a Christian minister, spend your 
time going up and down the country advising young people to get rich, to 
get money?" "Yes, of course I do." They say, "Isn't that awful! Why don't 
you preach the gospel instead of preaching about man's making money?" 



RUSSELL HERMAN CONWELL 2.JI 

"Because to make money honestly is to preach the gospel." That is the reason. 
The men who get rich may be the most honest men you find in the com- 
munity. 

"Oh," but says some young man here to-night, "I have been told all my 
life that if a person has money he is very dishonest and dishonorable and 
mean and contemptible." My friend, that is the reason why you have none, 
because you have that idea of people. The foundation of your faith is alto- 
gether false. Let me say here clearly, and say it briefly, though subject to 
discussion which I have not time for here, ninety-eight out of one hundred 
of the rich men of America are honest. That is why they are rich. That is 
why they are trusted with money. That is why they carry on great enter- 
prises and find plenty of people to work with them. It is because they are 
honest men. 

Says another young man, "I hear sometimes of men that get millions of 
dollars dishonestly." Yes, of course you do, and so do I. But they are so rare 
a thing in fact that the newspapers talk about them all the time as a matter 
of news until you get the idea that all the other rich men got rich dishonestly. 

My friend, you take and drive me— if you furnish the auto— out into the 
suburbs of Philadelphia, and introduce me to the people who own their homes 
around this great city, those beautiful homes with gardens and flowers, those 
magnificent homes so lovely in their art, and I will introduce you to the 
very best people in character as well as in enterprise in our city, and you 
know I will. A man is not really a true man until he owns his own home, 
and they that own their homes are made more honorable and honest and 
pure, and true and economical and careful, by owning the home. 

For a man to have money, even in large sums, is not an inconsistent thing. 
We preach against covetousness, and you know we do, in the pulpit, and 
oftentimes preach against it so long and use the terms about "filthy lucre" so 
extremely that Christians get the idea that when we stand in the pulpit we 
believe it is wicked for any man to have money— until the collection-basket 
goes around, and then we almost swear at the people because they don't 
give more money. Oh, the inconsistency of such doctrines as that! 

Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it. You 
ought because you can do more good with it than you could without it. 
Money printed your Bible, money builds your churches, money sends your 
missionaries, and money pays your preachers, and you would not have many 
of them, either, if you did not pay them. I am always willing that my church 
should raise my salary, because the church that pays the largest salary always 
raises it the easiest. You never knew an exception to it in your life. The man 
who gets the largest salary can do the most good with the power that is 
furnished to him. Of course he can if his spirit be right to use it for what 
it is given to him. 



272 THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. SOCIAL GOSPEL 

I say, then, you ought to have money. If you can honestly attain unto 
riches in Philadelphia, it is your Christian and godly duty to do so. It is an 
awful mistake of these pious people to think you must be awfully poor in 
order to be pious. 

Some men say, "Don't you sympathize with the poor people?" Of course 
I do, or else I would not have been lecturing these years. I won't give in but 
what I sympathize with the poor, but the number of poor who are to be 
sympathized with is very small. To sympathize with a man whom God has 
punished for his sins, thus to help him when God would still continue a just 
punishment, is to do wrong, no doubt about it, and we do that more than 
we help those who are deserving. While we should sympathize with God's 
poor— that is, those who cannot help themselves— let us remember there 
is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his 
own shortcomings, or by the shortcomings of some one else. It is all wrong 
to be poor, anyhow. Let us give in to that argument and pass that to one 
side. 

A gentleman gets up back there, and says, "Don't you think there are some 
things in this world that are better than money?" Of course I do, but I am 
talking about money now. Of course there are some things higher than 
money. Oh yes, I know by the grave that has left me standing alone that 
there are some things in this world that are higher and sweeter and purer 
than money. Well do I know there are some things higher and grander than 
gold. Love is the grandest thing on God's earth, but fortunate the lover who 
has plenty of money. Money is power, money is force, money will do good 
as well as harm. In the hands of good men and women it could accomplish, 
and it has accomplished, good. 

I hate to leave that behind me. I heard a man get up in a prayer-meeting 
in our city and thank the Lord he was "one of God's poor." Well, I wonder 
what his wife thinks about that? She earns all the money that comes into that 
house, and he smokes a part of that on the veranda. I don't want to see any 
more of the Lord's poor of that kind, and I don't believe the Lord does. And 
yet there are some people who think in order to be pious you must be awfully 
poor and awfully dirty. That does not follow at all. While we sympathize 
with the poor, let us not teach a doctrine like that. 

Yet the age is prejudiced against advising a Christian man (or, as a Jew 
would say, a godly man) from attaining unto wealth. The prejudice is so 
universal and the years are far enough back, I think, for me to safely mention 
that years ago up at Temple University there was a young man in our theo- 
logical school who thought he was the only pious student in that department. 
He came into my office one evening and sat down by my desk, and said to me: 
"Mr. President, I think it is my duty sir, to come in and labor with you." 
"What has happened now?" Said he, "I heard you say at the Academy, at 



RUSSELL HERMAN CONWELL 273 

the Peirce School commencement, that you thought it was an honorable 
ambition for a young man to desire to have wealth, and that you thought it 
made him temperate, made him anxious to have a good name, and made him 
industrious. You spoke about man's ambition to have money helping to make 
him a good man. Sir, I have come to tell you the Holy Bible says that 
money is the root of all evil.' " 

I told him I had never seen it in the Bible, and advised him to go out into 
the chapel and get the Bible, and show me the place. So out he went for the 
Bible, and soon he stalked into my office with the Bible open, with all the 
bigoted pride of the narrow sectarian, or of one who founds his Christianity 
on some misinterpretation of Scripture. He flung the Bible down on my desk, 
and fairly squealed into my ear: "There it is, Mr. President; you can read it 
for yourself." I said to him: "Well, young man, you will learn when you get 
a little older that you cannot trust another denomination to read the Bible for 
you. You belong to another denomination. You are taught in the theological 
school, however, that emphasis is exegesis. Now, will you take that Bible and 
read it yourself, and give the proper emphasis to it"?" 

He took the Bible, and proudly read, " 'The love of money is the root of 
all evil.' " 

Then he had it right, and when one does quote aright from that same old 
Book he quotes the absolute truth. I have lived through fifty years of the 
mightiest battle that old Book has ever fought, and I have lived to see its 
banners flying free; for never in the history of this world did the great minds 
of earth so universally agree that the Bible is true— all true— as they do at this 
very hour. 

So I say that when he quoted right, of course he quoted the absolute truth. 
"The love of money is the root of all evil." He who tries to attain unto it too 
quickly, or dishonestly, will fall into many snares, no doubt about that. The 
love of money. What is that? It is making an idol of money, and idolatry pure 
and simple everywhere is condemned by the Holy Scriptures and by man's 
common sense. The man that worships the dollar instead of thinking of the 
purposes for which it ought to be used, the man who idolizes simply money, 
the miser that hoards his money in the cellar, or hides it in his stocking, or 
refuses to invest it where it will do the world good, that man who hugs the 
dollar until the eagle squeals has in him the root of all evil. 

I think I will leave that behind me now and answer the question of nearly 
all of you who are asking, "Is there opportunity to get rich in Philadelphia?" 
Well, now, how simple a thing it is to see where it is, and the instant you see 
where it is it is yours. Some old gentleman gets up back there and says, "Mr. 
Conwell, have you lived in Philadelphia for thirty-one years and don't know 
that the time has gone by when you can make anything in this city?" "No, 
I don't think it is." "Yes, it is; I have tried it." "What business are you in?" 



274 THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. SOCIAL GOSPEL 

"I kept a store here for twenty years, and never made over a thousand dollars 
in the whole twenty years." 

"Well, then, you can measure the good you have been to this city by what 
this city has paid you, because a man can judge very well what he is worth 
by what he receives; that is, in what he is to the world at this time. If you 
have not made over a thousand dollars in twenty years in Philadelphia, it 
would have been better for Philadelphia if they had kicked you out of the 
city nineteen years and nine months ago. A man has no right to keep a store 
in Philadelphia twenty years and not make at least five hundred thousand 
dollars, even though it be a corner grocery up-town." You say, "You cannot 
make five thousand dollars in a store now." Oh, my friends, if you will just 
take only four blocks around you, and find out what the people want and 
what you ought to supply and set them down with your pencil, and figure 
up the profits you would make if you did supply them, you would very soon 
see it. There is wealth right within the sound of your voice. 

Some one says : "You don't know anything about business. A preacher never 
knows a thing about business." Well, then, I will have to prove that I am an 
expert. I don't like to do this, but I have to do it because my testimony will 
not be taken if I am not an expert. My father kept a country store, and if 
there is any place under the stars where a man gets all sorts of experience in 
every kind of mercantile transactions, it is in the country store. I am not 
proud of my experience, but sometimes when my father was away he would 
leave me in charge of the store, though fortunately for him that was not 
very often. But this did occur many times, friends: A man would come in the 
store, and say to me, "Do you keep jack-knives?" "No, we don't keep jack- 
knives," and I went off whistling a tune. What did I care about that man, 
anyhow? Then another farmer would come in and say, "Do you keep jack- 
knives?" "No, we don't keep jack-knives." Then I went away and whistled 
another tune. Then a third man came right in the same door and said, "Do 
you keep jack-knives?" "No. Why is every one around here asking for jack- 
knives? Do you suppose we are keeping this store to supply the whole neigh- 
borhood with jack-knives?" Do you carry on your store like that in Philadel- 
phia? The difficulty was I had not then learned that the foundation of 
godliness and the foundation principle of success in business are both the 
same precisely. The man who says, "I cannot carry my religion into business" 
advertises himself either as being an imbecile in business, or on the road to 
bankruptcy, or a thief, one of the three, sure. He will fail within a very few 
years. He certainly will if he doesn't carry his religion into business. If I had 
been carrying on my father's store on a Christian plan, godly plan, I would 
have had a jack-knife for the third man when he called for it. Then I would 
have actually done him a kindness, and I would have received a reward 
myself, which it would have been my duty to take. 






RUSSELL HERMAN CONWELL . 275 

There are some over-pious Christian people who think if you take any 
profit on anything you sell that you are an unrighteous man. On the contrary, 
you would be a criminal to sell goods for less than they cost. You have no right 
to do that. You cannot trust a man with your money who cannot take care 
of his own. You cannot trust a man in your family that is not true to his own 
wife. You cannot trust a man in the world that does not begin with his own 
heart, his own character, and his own life. It would have been my duty to 
have furnished a jack-knife to the third man, or the second, and to have sold 
it to him and actually profited myself. I have no more right to sell goods with- 
out making a profit on them than I have to overcharge him dishonestly beyond 
what they are worth. But I should so sell each bill of goods that the person 
to whom I sell shall make as much as I make. 

To live and let live is the principle of the gospel, and the principle of 
every-day common sense. Oh, young man, hear me; live as you go along. Do 
not wait until you have reached my years before you begin to enjoy anything 
of this life. If I had the millions back, or fifty cents of it, which I have tried 
to earn in these years, it would not do me anything like the good that it does 
me now in this almost sacred presence to-night. Oh, yes, I am paid over and 
over a hundredfold to-night for dividing as I have tried to do in some measure 
as I went along through the years. I ought not speak that way, it sounds 
egotistic, but I am old enough now to be excused for that. I should have 
helped my fellow-men, which I have tried to do, and every one should try 
to do, and get the happiness of it. The man who goes home with the sense 
that he has stolen a dollar that day, that he has robbed a man of what was 
his honest due, is not going to sweet rest. He arises tired in the morning, and 
goes with an unclean conscience to his work the next day. He is not a 
successful man at all, although he may have laid up millions. But the man 
who has gone through life dividing always with his fellow-men, making and 
demanding his own rights and his own profits, and giving to every other man 
his rights and profits, lives every day, and not only that, but it is the royal 
road to great wealth. The history of the thousands of millionaires shows that 
to be the case. 



The Message of Jesus 
to Men of Wealth 

GEORGE DAVIS HERRON 



Born, Montezuma, Indiana, ]anuary 21, 1862; died, Mu- 
nich, Bavaria, October 9, 1925. Attended preparatory 
department, Ripon College (Wisconsin), lSyg-i^z. En- 
tered ministry, 1883, holding successive pastorates at hake 
City, Minnesota and Burlington, Iowa. Professor of Ap- 
plied Christianity, Iowa College (later Grinnell), 1893- 
1899. Deposed from Iowa Congregational Council because 
of his divorce and unorthodox views toward marriage. 
Embraced left-wing Utopian thought and movements. 
Helped found Rand School of Social Science, New York 
City. Resided in Italy for most of his life in twentieth 
century. Served as emissary for Wilson in peace negotia- 
tions after World War I. 



/am appointed to present to you, this evening, what I 
understand to be the message of Jesus to men of 
wealth, and to apply that message to the problems of society which the best 
thought and truest sympathy of our times are reaching out to solve. I assume, 
in what I shall say, that I am addressing an audience of Christ's disciples. 
In their essence, the social problems of to-day are not different from those 
of yesterday; they are as old as society itself. They date back to the infancy 
of the race, when sin couched at the door of Adam's eldest son, to spring up 

Plymouth Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 22, 1890, at the annual 
meeting of the Minnesota Congregational Club. George D. Herron, The Message of 
Jesus to Men of Wealth (New York and Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1891), 
pp. 5-32. Full text also in The Christian Union, 42 (December 11, 1890), pp. 804-805. 

276 



GEORGE DAVIS HERRON 277 

within his heart as hatred for his younger brother. Ever since Cain— whom 
President Hitchcock calls "that first godless political economist"— killed his 
brother Abel, the associability of human beings for good and common ends 
has been a problem: a problem, be it kept in mind, born in a heart of covet- 
ousness, and set by the hand of hate for the race to solve. Cain's murder of his 
brother Abel was the first bald, brutal assertion of self-interest as the law of 
human life— an assertion always potential with murder: an assertion whose 
acceptance involves the triumph of the brute man over the God-imaged man : 
an assertion which the divine heart of humanity has always denied: a theory 
of society which will be remembered as a frightful dream of the past when 
the race recovers its moral sanity. Cain's hands were the first to grasp and 
wield competition as the weapon of progress; a weapon from which no eco- 
nomic theorists have ever been able to wash the blood of human suffering. 
When Cain replied to God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" he stated the ques- 
tion to which all past and present problems of man's earthly existence are 
reducible. The search for the final and comprehensive answer to Cain's ques- 
tion has been the race's sacred sorrow; and obedience to such an answer would 
carry in it the perfect solvent of all the problems that perplex the minds 
and hearts of men. 



The Dream of the Ages 

History and prophecy have always pointed toward a time of industrial 
peace and social brotherhood. The most unselfish aspirations of the noblest 
men have been along the line of the social unity of the race. About this hope 
statesmen and philosophers have woven their sublimest theories of society and 
government. It has been the highest inspiration of poetry. It is the end toward 
which Moses and Plato looked. It is the lofty strain borne along from prophet 
to prophet through Israel's glory and shame. Outside of Biblical prophecy 
there is no purer expression of this ancient hope than in John Stuart Mill's 
autobiography: "I yet looked forward," he says, "to a time . . . when the 
division of the produce of labor, instead of depending, as in so great a degree 
it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by an acknowledged prin- 
ciple of justice; and when it will no longer be, or be thought to be, impossible 
for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which 
are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared by society to which they 
belong." 

And yet, with all the history and prophecy, the schools and temples, the 
philosophy and poetry, the governments and civilizations, the day of brother- 
hood seems no nearer than generations ago. The hope grows faint with age. 
The problems of society are still unsolved. 

The question of Cain is the master question of our age. It has grown articu- 



278 THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. SOCIAL GOSPEL 

late with the greed and cruelty of history. It threatens our American day and 
nation with the crisis of the centuries. It must be answered; and answered 
with justice and righteousness. The blood of Abel cries out through toiling 
millions. The expectation of the poor shall not forever perish in hopeless toil- 
ing and longing for better days. As John Ruskin says, "There are voices of 
battle and famine through all the earth, which must be heard some day, 
whoever keeps silence." No arrogant reply as to the historic and legal rights 
of private and corporate property will silence these voices. 



Civilization Cannot Fulfill the Dream of Social Justice 

The natural development of our civilization will not unfold the solution of 
our industrial problems. When we watch the mammoth enginery of this 
modern civilization through the assurances of a partisan press, or the merce- 
nary declamation of the politician who estimates the moral stupidity of the 
people by his own, the movements of its great wheels seem wonderfully safe 
and perfect; but when we, in our sober, honest, thoughtful moments, view 
it through the sympathies and purposes of the divine Man of Sorrows, we see 
torn, bleeding, mangled, sorrowing, famishing multitudes beneath the wheels 
of its remorseless enginery; we see that greed and not love is the power that 
moves our civilization; we see politics, commerce, and the social club moving 
on the economic assumption that selfishness is the only considerable social 
force, and assuming that civilization can advance only through the equal bal- 
ancing of warring, selfish interests; we see men valuing brute cunning and the 
low instinct of shrewdness more than whiteness of soul. 

A civilization based on self-interest, and securing itself through competi- 
tion, has no power within itself to secure justice. We speak to pitiless forces 
when we appeal to its processes to right the wrongs and inequalities of society. 
The world is not to be saved by civilization. It is civilization that needs saving. 
A civilization basing itself upon self-interest has a more dangerous foundation 
than dynamite. It is built upon falsehood. It carries in it the elements of 
anarchy because it has no ground in moral realities. It is atheistic because it 
treats God and his righteousness as external to itself. It is nihilistic because it 
thrives on destruction. It is a civilization which Bishop Huntington declares 
"leads by a sure course to barbarism." It is a civilization under whose proces- 
sion John Stuart Mill affirms the very idea of "justice, or any proportionality 
between success and merit, or between success and exertion," to be "so chi- 
merical as to be relegated to the region of romance." The end to which the 
civilization of the present tends is material, and not moral; it tends to the 
enslavement of society and the smothering of its highest life. Civilization is 
the flower of the character of the dominant classes; it is an effect more than a 
cause; its forces originate in character; its activities are the expression of the 



GEORGE DAVIS HERRON 279 

people's being. No civilization can be made righteous, or can make itself 
righteous, by any restraints or regulations external to itself. A righteous civili- 
zation can have no other source than the inward righteousness of those who 
originate and control its forces. 



The Impotency of Abstract Truth 

There is no power in abstract truth, either economic, ethical, or theological, 
to cure our social ills. Economic laws naturally deal with things external to 
man's being; with principles which will be accepted or rejected according to 
inward forces of character which they can obey, but cannot control. Ethical 
truth taught to an unspiritualized race, or generation, or civilization, is a 
childish waste of time and strength. There is no ethics apart from religion. 
The springs of human virtue are all in God. There is no ethical truth other 
than the expression of the will of God. Socrates, Plato and Shakespeare seem 
to have understood this better than some of us who teach our fellow-men 
to-day. Nearly all the warnings of the Old and New Testament, which we so 
self-assuringly address to so-called unbelievers, were addressed in the first 
place to those who presumed themselves to be already in the kingdom of God; 
to those in the temple services and the churches. The ethical instructions of 
Jesus and the apostles were all based upon and developed from the cross. 
Theological truth has repeatedly shown its barrenness of the fruit of righteous- 
ness. The darkest crimes of history have been committed by the conservators 
of religion. A jealousy for theological truth often accompanies a hatred of 
duty. The Pharisees were so orthodox that they crucified Christ for heresy. 
They possessed the oracles of God. Yet the truth did not save them from 
greedy, heartless, malignant, hypocritical lives. A slavish and enslaving con- 
servatism has always joined hands with an indifferent worldlyism for the 
crucifixion of God's perennial revelations of incarnate truth. I suspect the 
devil knows more truth than any of us; and he is all the more devilish for 
knowing it. Truth that does not strike its roots in love is a curse; and the 
truer the truth the more accursed its results. There is a pregnant thought, 
which the Church has yet to learn, in a saying of Mozoomdar's in his 
"Oriental Christ" : "Unless our creeds fertilize the world, and our lives furnish 
meat and drink to mankind, the curse uttered on barrenness will descend 
on us." 



Hope, Not in the State 

We cannot look to the State to solve our social woes and grant our social 
hopes. All the great political prophets, from Moses to Milton, and from Milton 
to Sumner and Mulford, recognize that the people are the makers of the State 



280 THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. SOCIAL GOSPEL 

rather than the State the makers of the people. The State is the expression of 
the highest common thought of the people; it is the work of the people's 
faith. Hegel says "the State is the realization of the moral idea" of the people. 
The people must be righteous before the State can be righteous. If we agree 
with Milton that the State "ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, 
one mighty growth or stature of an honest man," then the Christian State 
must be the offspring of a Christian people. If we regard the State, with 
Sumner, as a grand moral institution, it must be moral because the people 
build it with their moral thought and purpose. The best and strongest institu- 
tions have been powerless to restrain people whose moral conceptions they 
did not embody. The Mosaic legislation was never fully enforced. Roman law 
could find no expression in the thought and life of later Rome. Alfred the 
Great incorporated the Ten Commandments and Golden Rule in the early 
English constitution, but they are yet far from being the laws of English 
industrial and social life. Laws written on tables of stone and printed in stat- 
ute books are but the playthings of politicians if they are not written in 
people's hearts. Laws cannot make men unselfish. They can restrain; but all 
legal righteousness is but temporary. Police righteousness is not divine right- 
eousness. Force-justice is unreal justice. The State cannot, by any possible 
process, make the rich man unselfish, or the poor man thrifty. The State can- 
not establish justice and righteousness on the earth; but justice and righteous- 
ness must establish the State. Except the State be born again, it cannot see 
the Kingdom of God. 



The Heart Disease of Society 

The heart of all our social disputes is what Mulford calls "the crude asser- 
tion of an enlightened self-interest as a law of human activity." This assertion 
is the essence of the gospel which Professor Sumner proclaims from his chair 
in a great Christian university. Social classes, he decides, owe each other 
nothing; benevolence is simply barter, and "the yearning after equality the 
offspring of envy and covetousness." This is a gospel which would have caused 
the proclaimer to be mobbed in the streets of Athens in the days of Pericles; 
a gospel which would have astounded Moses, and seemed ancient and bar- 
barous to Abraham. The supremacy of the law of self-interest is the conclusion 
of Herbert Spencer's materialistic philosophy; and of the wretched pessimism 
of Hartmann and Schopenhauer. It is the principle upon which Cain slew 
his brother. It was the seductive whisper of the serpent in Eve's ear. It is the 
principle upon which crime is committed. It is the principle upon which the 
capitalist acts who treats labor as no more than a commodity subject to the 
lowest market rate and the law of supply and demand. It is the principle upon 
which railroads are bonded and bankrupted for private ends. It is the law by 



GEORGE DAVIS HERRON 28 1 

which the New England deacon chattels his money upon the Dakota farmer's 
meager possessions at a usurious and impoverishing rate of interest— a deed 
which will not be obscured from the eyes of a just God by the endowment 
of a chair in a denominational college. It is the principle upon which a Chi- 
cago financier proceeds, with no more moral justification than the highway- 
man's robbery of an express train, to "corner" the pork market, and thus force 
from the hungry mouths of toiling families a million and a half of dollars 
into his private treasury— a deed for which the giving of some thousands to 
found city missions and orphans' homes will be no atonement in the reckon- 
ing of the God who judges the world in righteousness and not by the ethics 
of the stock exchange. The law of self-interest is the eternal falsehood which 
mothers all social and private woes; for sin is pure individualism— the assertion 
of self against God and humanity. 

The Divine Remedy 

God's answer to Cain's question, God's solvent of the social problems of 
our day, is the cross. And the cross is more than an historic event. It is the 
law by which God acts, and expects men to act. It is the creed of God which 
will never be revised. It is the principle upon which creation and history 
proceed. It was the assertion intensified which God has been making through 
all history, of self-sacrifice as the law of human development and achievement. 
Self-sacrifice is the law which God asserts in Christ over against the law of 
self-interest which Satan asserts in Cain. The trial in progress is Christ versus 
Cain. The decision to which the times are hastening us is, Shall Christ or 
Cain reign in our American civilization? And well may the heavens await 
our decision in silent and awful wonder; for we are deciding the destiny of 
the earth! 



The Kingdom Is at Hand 

The whole question of labor and capital, and all the problems of our day, 
can be restated in this form: Is the Gospel of Jesus livable? God is calling 
to-day for able men who are willing to be financially crucified in order to 
establish the world's market on a Golden Rule basis. He is calling for noble 
women who are willing to be socially crucified to make society the agency 
for uplifting instead of crushing the poor and ignorant and weak. "Whoever," 
says Benjamin Franklin, "introduces into the public affairs the principles of 
primitive Christianity will change the face of the world." It is for this work 
that God would anoint you, O Christian business men of America! History 
has never presented to man an opportunity richer than yours. You can make 



282 THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH VS. SOCIAL GOSPEL 

the market as sacred as the church. You can make the whirl of industrial 
wheels like the joyous music of worship. You can be the knights of the noblest 
chivalry the world has ever seen; not going forth "to recover the tomb of a 
buried god," as Ruskin said of the crusaders of Richard Lionheart, but to 
fulfill the commands of the eternal Christ. And where you go, flowers of hope 
will spring in your footprints. You can bear the weak in your arms, and set 
the captives of poverty free. You can cause the deserts of human despair to 
blossom with the gladness of fulfilled prophecy, and hush the voices of dis- 
content in the sweetness of fruitful toil. You can give work to the wageless; 
teach the thriftless and ignorant; seat the poor in the best pews of your 
churches. You need not strive nor cry, nor wear plumes and flaunt banners; 
but you can be the heralds of a new civilization, the creators of a Christian 
industry whose peaceful procession will reach around the globe. You. need 
carry no crosses of wood or gold or silver; but you can bury the cross of your 
Christ deep within your hearts and stretch forth consecrated hands to realize 
the life of humanity by upraising it into the idealism of Jesus. You can draw 
the world's trades and traffics within the onsweep of Christ's redemptive 
purpose. You can plant everlasting peace underneath the feet of men, so 
that there shall be no more strife; and light earth's night of toil with skies of 
love, so that there shall be no more night. You can be the makers of the new 
earth wherein dwelleth righteousness; in which the race will be at last human 
because it is divine, and divine because it is human. 

God's new day of judgment is surely and swiftly dawning. Voices from out 
the future are crying repentance unto this mammon-worshiping generation. 
The axe is laid at the root of the trees. New John Baptists are arising who 
will speak truth and justice to the Herods of finance, though their ecclesias- 
tical heads be the price of the message. 

In the lead of human progress I see the matchless figure of the Son of God- 
Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that 
turns not back. 

Behold the Lamb of God that beareth away the sin of the world! Let us 
close about him, O brother men, and keep step with the march of the cross! 

Till upon earth's grateful sod 
Rests the city of our God! 



REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE 
RELIGION OF HUMANITY 



Social Gospelers sought to harmonize man's life in his 
worldly setting with eschatological doctrine. Clergymen 
such as Washington Gladden and Henry Ward Beecher, 
son of the redoubtable Lyman Beecher, applauded science 
both for its contributions to mans lot on earth and for 
the light it shed on God's cosmic plan. Religious liberals 
dissolved the latest tensions between naturalism and 
swpernaturalism— tensions stimulated by developments in 
biological science— through recourse to doctrines of "de- 
sign" and "secondary causes," ideas derived from efforts 
in earlier centuries to reconcile emergent physical science 
with God. 

"Design" postulated that every scientific discovery testi- 
fied to "God's all-wise purpose"; and "secondary causes," 
as Curti puts it, "divided the pat functions of the Creator 
in the first instance with the detailed and subsequent 
working out, by scientific law, of His ultimate intentions." 
Thus Beecher could relax comfortably and designate him- 
self a "cordial Christian evolutionist." Although "design" 
and "secondary causes" helped liberals out of their intel- 
lectual dilemma, these devices also had the effect of 
depersonalizing God, and of eroding popular faith in the 
doctrine of super naturalism. 

Orthodox religionists, of course, had no truck with 
these innovations and compromises. They perceived the 

283 



284 REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

latent perils to supernaturalism that resided in revisionist 
theories. As heretofore, they maintained that God is not 
only the Author of nature, hut He "directly intervenes in 
natural events and the affairs of men through miracles 
and the granting of grace." 1 These defenders of the old 
faith had strength in depth. They drew upon various 
wings of Protestant orthodoxy, supported by the resurgent 
revivalism of Dwight L. Moody and others, and their 
ranks were steadily swelled by immigrant Roman Catho- 
lics. Protestants stood upon Holy Writ, and Roman 
Catholics looked as ever to the church as their custodian 
of revealed truth. Whichever authority was invoked, the 
claims of revealed truth were stoutly maintained against 
compromisers and downright infidels. 

But the challenges to supernaturalism kept coming, 
and from all sides. Scholarly investigations of the Scrip- 
tures, called Higher Criticism, cast doubt on the Bible 
as a stenographic report of God's word. The comparative 
study of religions undermined confidence in the Bible as 
a reliable authority on which to base claims for the 
uniqueness of Christianity among religions. Darwin's 
theory of organic evolution seemed to contest the very 
basis of revealed truth. And secularists generally, how- 
ever they reached their conclusion, were prone to accept 
man as a creature who is quite adequate to his purposes. 

Orthodox Christians stood at Armageddon. They con- 
tested painstaking textual and anthropological studies as 
best they could, or ingenuously brushed criticism aside, 
as did Dwight L. Moody when he declared that "the 
Bible was not made to understand." They recoiled from 
the thought that man had ascended by stages from prime- 
val ooze, and contended for the Biblical account of man 
as a special creation of God. Self-styled emancipated 
Christians who turned to the "religion of humanity" were 

1 Merle Curti, The Growth of American Thought (New York: 
Harper & Brothers, 1943), p. 532. 



REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 285 

reminded that man is impotent unless sustained by the 
grace of God. So the arguments ran. 

The publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species in 
1859 triggered a hot war of words. The ink was hardly 
dry before challenges were flying. In June, i860, Thomas 
Huxley, Darwin's bulldog, debated Samuel Wilberforce, 
Bishop of Oxford, on the theory of organic evolution. 
Wilberforce asked Huxley if it was through his grand- 
father or grandmother that he claimed to have descended 
from a monkey. In high dudgeon, Huxley said he pre- 
ferred having an ape for his ancestor to an intellectual 
prostitute like Bishop Wilberforce. Wilberforce s diatribe 
and Huxley's heated rejoinder exposed the inflammatory 
possibilities of the issue. 

A decade after the Huxley-Wilberforce fracas, an 
American, Robert Green Ingersoll, set out on a one-man 
mission to rescue mankind from religious captivity. He 
was an avowed agnostic, a word Huxley claimed to have 
invented. Ingersoll was not just another peripatetic free- 
thinker who appealed to misfits drawn from the marginal 
fringes of society. He had credentials. His father was a 
respected clergyman. Though the son rejected his father's 
religion, he inclined toward his father's reformist bent. 
He had been a soldier in the Civil War. He was the 
Republican party's greatest orator and turned up regularly 
during campaigns to wave the bloody shirt. He acquired 
national fame through a single speech when, in 1876, he 
nominated James Blaine for President and named him 
the "Plumed Knight." He was one of the great trial 
lawyers of his age. In short, Ingersoll had access to the 
middling and influential classes, for he could pass the 
tests of respectability, religion excepted. And to spike 
canards that he drew his audiences from under the rocks, 
he always charged an admission fee for his lectures on 
religion. 

Ingersoll was largely self-educated. He read voraciously 



286 REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

and readily assimilated what he read. Early in life he 
concluded that helief in super naturalism was founded on 
ignorance and superstition, that through the ages churches 
had "picked the pockets and brains of the world." Inger- 
soll regarded his unremitting lecture tours as demolition 
activity. The job of the demolitionist was to blast illusions 
and open the way for exact science. Ingersoll relished his 
work. 

In an early lecture, "The Gods" (1872), Ingersoll de- 
fined his role and world view. He opened with a para- 
phrase on Alexander Pope, "An honest God is the noblest 
work of man." The god-market, he continued, is glutted 
with phantoms that bespeak men's fears and ignorance. 

For the vagaries of the clouds the infidels propose to sub- 
stitute the realities of earth; for superstition, the splendid 
demonstrations and achievements of science; and for theologi- 
cal tyranny, the chainless liberty of thought. 

The demolition of gods and supernaturalism was not an 
end in itself. 

It is a means to an end: the real end being the happiness 
of man. . . . We are laying the foundation of the grand 
temple of the future— not the temple of all the gods, but of 
all the people— wherein, with appropriate rites, will be 
celebrated the religion of humanity. 

But it was not Ingersoll's doctrine alone that threat- 
ened to accelerate creeping secularism and infidelity. It 
was also the speaker, his drawing power, and those pam- 
phlets of his based on speeches that boys smuggled into 
the haymows. Few speakers had Ingersoll's energy, joie de 
vivre, mental agility, or felicity in language. None equaled 
his devastating wit in speech, not even Mark Twain, 
though some assailed it as profane laughter. 

The heretically inclined Henry Ward Beecher rejoiced 
in his friendship with Ingersoll and even introduced the 
infidel with glowing words at a public meeting. Another 



REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 287 

and a more orthodox Brooklyn clergyman, the Reverend 
T. DeWitt Talmage, proceeded to exorcise this latest 
Satanic scourge. Talmage was only one of a host of out- 
raged Christians who took out after Ingersoll, hut Tal- 
mage s great following made his thwackings resound 
through the land. Like Beecher, Talmage had a flair for 
experimental preaching. Both Talmage and Beecher did 
away with the pulpit— an obstacle to muscular Christian- 
ity; both favored wide, open platforms for energetic 
roaming. Both preferred the topical homiletic method to 
the expository; both were pictorial in style. Both drew 
huge audiences, and both were internationally reported 
in the press. But whereas Beecher espoused evolution and 
sponsored Ingersoll, Talmage donned the armor of St. 
George to destroy the dragons of infidelity and blasphemy. 

Between January 15 and February 26, 18S2, Talmage 
delivered six sermons on Ingersoll in his Brooklyn Taber- 
nacle. He opened the series with "Mr. Ingersoll, the 
Champion Blasphemer of America, Answered," and closed 
with "Victory for God." Talmage simulated a courtroom 
setting and invited his audience to render their verdict 
at the end of the series in the case of "Infidelity, the plain- 
tiff, versus Christianity, the defendant." Though Talmage 
protested there was nothing personal about it all, he left 
no doubts as to who was the villain in the piece. He took 
up IngersolVs allegations point by point— the Bible is a 
false book, the Bible is a cruel book, the Bible is an im- 
pure book, and so on. He scoffed at "infidel scientists who 
have fifty different theories about the origin of life," and 
concluded that "The only exact science is Christianity— 
the only thing under which you can appropriately write: 
'Quod erat demonstrandum. ' " Thus Talmage the prose- 
cutor concluded his case, disregarding his initial invitation 
to his congregation by turning himself into judge and 
jury as well. 

His case stated, tried, and adjudicated by the theo- 



288 REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

logian, Ingersoll the lawyer lost no time in repaying the 
compliments. He gave long interviews on Talmage and 
Talmagian theology which, in published form, run to 
approximately 450 pages in the Dresden Edition of his 
Works. He singled out Talmage for special treatment in 
a number of public addresses in New York and Chicago 
because "He is the only Presbyterian minister in the 
United States who can draw an audience. He stands at 
the head of the denomination, and I answer him." 

On Sunday afternoon, November 12, 1882, when a 
paying audience of three thousand people packed Mc- 
Vicker's Theatre in Chicago to watch Ingersoll dissect the 
anatomy of Talmagian theology, they were fully confident 
that blood would be spilled. Ingersoll did not disappoint 
them. The next day, Monday, some troubled souls gath- 
ered in Chicago's Lower Farwell Hall to deprecate Inger- 
soll's lecture and to placate Jehovah, lest in His wrath 
He destroy Chicago as He did Jerusalem after the cruci- 
fixion of Christ. 2 

Public hassles over religion and agnosticism subsided 
after Ingersoll' s death in 1899. Then, following a decade 
of quiescence, Biblical literalists took to raking over old 
coals. After World War I many of the old issues flared 
up again, aided by William Jennings Bryan's vigorous 
stoking. Speaking under such provocative titles as "Brute 
or Brother," Bryan became the principal figure in stirring 
up the controversy between Fundamentalists and Mod- 
ernists in the nineteen twenties. 



2 The Chicago Tribune, November 14, 1882, p. 8. 



Victory Jor God 
T. DEWITT TALMAGE 



Born, Middlebrook, New Jersey, January y, 1832; died, 
Washington, D.C., April iz, 1902. Educated at the Uni- 
versity of the City of New York and the New Brunswick 
Seminary of the Dutch Reformed Church. Held pastor- 
ates successively at Belleville, New Jersey; Syracuse; 
Philadelphia; Brooklyn; and Washington, D.C. Inter- 
nationally popular as preacher and lecturer. His weekly 
sermons are said to have been carried in as many as 3500 
newspapers. 



Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that the ploughman 
shall overtake the reaper. Amos 9:13. 

Picture a tropical clime with a season so prosperous that 
the harvest reaches clear over to the planting time, and 
the swarthy husbandman swinging the sickle in the thick grain almost feels the 
breath of the horses on his shoulders, the horses hitched to the plough prepar- 
ing for a new crop. "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the ploughman 
shall overtake the reaper." When is that? That is now. That is this day when 
hardly have you done reaping one harvest than the ploughman is getting 
ready for another. 

I know that Mr. Ingersoll and coadjutors say in their lectures and in 
their interviews, and in phraseology charged with all venom and abuse and 
caricature, that Christianity has collapsed, that the Bible is an obsolete book, 
that the Christian Church is on the retreat. I shall answer that wholesale 
charge this morning, in this my last sermon on infidelity, because I must 

The Brooklyn Tabernacle, February 26, 1882. T. DeWitt Talmage, The Brooklyn 
Tabernacle (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1884), pp. 1 15-120. 

289 



290 REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

enter into the pentecostal blessing which is coming upon us, and turn 
your attention to other subjects. But I now here declare what I declare 
for the first time, what has been the chief motive in the delivery of these 
discourses against infidelity. It was merely a preparation for what we are 
now to begin in the way of evangelistic services. I know, as you know, 
that thorough belief in the Bible as the Word of God is the best influence 
to waken people up to act in regard to their present and everlasting welfare. 
Vast multitudes, I believe, during these sermons have been persuaded that 
the Bible is a commonsensical book, that it is a reasonable book, that it 
is an authentic book. Men have told me that while they had been ac- 
customed to receive the New Testament they had disbelieved the Old 
Testament, until by the blessing of God upon this exposition they have 
come to believe that the Old Testament is just as true as the New Testament, 
and I have had so many encouragements to go on that I have kept on to 
this time with these discourses. A man said to me last Saturday night in 
Cleveland, Ohio, as he tapped me on the shoulder: "I want to tell you 
that my son who was at college and who was a confirmed infidel, wrote 
me in a letter which I got this morning, saying that through the arguments 
you have presented in behalf of the truth of the Bible, he has given up 
his scepticism and surrendered his heart to God. I thought you would 
like to hear it." I said, "God bless you, that is the best thing I have heard 
to-night." And so I believe the people are all going to be persuaded that 
this is God's word. 

An Arab guide was leading a French infidel across a desert, and ever 
and anon the Arab guide would get down in the sand and pray to the 
Lord. It disgusted the French infidel, and after a while as the Arab got up 
from one of his prayers the infidel said: "How do you know there is any 
God?" and the Arab guide said: "How do I know that a man and a camel 
passed along our tent last night? I know it by the footprint in the sand. 
And you want to know how I know whether there is any God. Look at 
that sunset. Is that the footstep of a man?" And by the same process you 
and I have come to understand that this is the footstep of a God. 

But now let us see whether the Bible is a last year's almanac. Let us see 
whether the Church of God is in a Bull Run retreat, muskets, canteens, 
and haversacks strewing all the way. The great English historian, Sharon 
Turner, a man of vast learning and of great accuracy, not a clergyman, but 
an attorney, as well as a historian, gives this overwhelming statistic in 
regard to Christianity and in regard to the number of Christians in the dif- 
ferent centuries. In the first century 500,000 Christians; in the second 
century, 2,000,000 Christians; in the third century, 5,000,000 Christians; 
in the fourth century, 10,000,000 Christians; in the fifth century, 15,000,000 
Christians; in the sixth century, 20,000,000 Christians; in the seventh cen- 



T. DE WITT TALMAGE 29 1 

tury, 24,000,000 Christians; in the eighth century, 30,000,000 Christians; 
in the ninth century, 40,000,000 Christians; in the tenth century, 50,000,000 
Christians; in the eleventh century, 70,000,000 Christians; in the twelfth 
century, 80,000,000 Christians; in the thirteenth century, 75,000,000 Chris- 
tians; in the fourteenth century, 80,000,000 Christians; in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, 100,000,000 Christians; in the sixteenth century, 125,000,000 Christians; 
in the seventeenth century, 155,000,000 Christians; in the eighteenth century, 
200,000,000 Christians— a decadence, as you observe, in only one century, 
and more than made up in the following centuries, while it is the usual 
computation that there will be, when the record of the nineteenth century 
is made up, at least 300,000,000 Christians. Poor Christianity! what a pity 
it has no friends. How lonesome it must be. Who will take it out of the 
poorhouse? Poor Christianity! Three hundred millions in one century. In 
a few weeks of last year 2,500,000 copies of the New Testament distributed. 
Why, the earth is like an old castle with twenty gates and a park of 
artillery ready to thunder down every gate. Lay aside all Christendom and 
see how heathendom is being surrounded and honey-combed and attacked 
by this all-conquering Gospel. At the beginning of this century there were 
only 150 missionaries; now there are 25,000 missionaries and native helpers 
and evangelists. At the beginning of this century there were only 50,000 
heathen converts; now there are 1,650,000 converts from heathendom. 
There is not a sea-coast on the planet but the battery of the Gospel is 
planted and ready to march on, north, south, east, west. You all know that 
the chief work of an army is to plant the batteries. It may take many days 
to plant the batteries, and they may do all the work in ten minutes. These 
batteries are being planted all along the sea-coasts and in all nations. It 
may take a good while to plant them, and they may do all their work in one 
day. They will. Nations are to be born in a day. But just come back to 
Christendom and recognize the fact that during the last ten years as many 
people have connected themselves with evangelical churches as connected 
themselves with the churches in the first fifty years of this century. 

So Christianity is falling back, and the Bible, they say, is becoming an 
obsolete book. I go into a court, and wherever I find a judge's bench or 
a clerk's desk, I find a Bible. Upon what book could there be uttered the 
solemnity of an oath? What book is apt to be put in the trunk of the young 
man as he leaves for city life? The Bible. What shall I find in nine out of 
every ten homes in Brooklyn? The Bible. In nine out of every ten homes 
in Christendom? The Bible. Voltaire wrote the prophecy that the Bible 
in the nineteenth century would become extinct. The century is gone all 
except eighteen years, and as there have been more Bibles published in the 
latter part of the century than in the former part of the century, do you 
think the Bible will become extinct in the next eighteen years? I have 



292 REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

to tell you that the room in which Voltaire wrote that prophecy, not long 
ago was crowded from floor to ceiling with Bibles from Switzerland. Sup- 
pose the Congress of the United States should pass a law that there should 
be no more Bibles printed in America, and no more Bibles read. If there 
are thirty million grown people in the United States there would be 
thirty million people in an army to put down such a law and defend their 
right to read the Bible. But suppose the Congress of the United States 
should make a law against the reading or the publication of any other 
book, how many people would go out in such a crusade? Could you get 
thirty million people to go out and risk their lives in the defence of Shake- 
speare's tragedies or Gladstone's tracts, or Macaulay's History of England? 
You know that there are a thousand men who would die in the defence of 
this book, where there is not more than one man who would die in defence 
of any other book. You try to insult my common-sense by telling me the 
Bible is fading out from the world. It is the most popular book of the 
century. How do I know it? I know it just as I know in regard to other books. 
How many volumes of that book are published? Well, you say, five thousand. 
How many copies of that book are published? A hundred thousand. Which 
is the more popular? Why of course the one that has a hundred thousand 
circulation. And if this book has more copies abroad in the world, if there 
are five times as many Bibles abroad as any other book, does that show you 
that the most popular book on the planet to-day is the Word of God? 

"Oh," say people, "the church is a collection of hypocrites, and it is losing 
its power and it is fading out from the world." Is it? A bishop of the 
Methodist Church told me that that denomination averages a new church 
every day of the year. In other words, they build three hundred and sixty- 
five churches in that denomination in a year, and there are at least one 
thousand new Christian churches built in America every year. Does that 
look as though the church were fading out, as though it were a defunct 
institution? Which institution stands nearest the hearts of the people of 
America today? I do not care in what village or in what city, or what 
neighborhood you go. Which institution is it? Is it the post-office? Is it 
the hotel? Is it the lecturing hall? Ah, you know it is not. You know that 
the institution which stands nearest to the hearts of the American people 
is the Christian church. If you have ever seen a church burn down, you 
have seen thousands of people standing and looking at it— people who 
never go into a church— the tears raining down their cheeks. The whole 
story is told. 

You may talk about the church being a collection of hypocrites, but 
when the diphtheria sweeps your children off, whom do you send for? The 
postmaster? the attorney-general? the hotel keeper? alderman? No, you 




T. DE WITT TALMAGE 293 

send for a minister of this Bible religion. And if you have not a room in 
your house for the obsequies, what building do you solicit? Do you say: 
"Give me the finest room in the hotel?" Do you say: "Give me that theatre?" 
Do you say: "Give me a place in that public building where I can lay my 
dead for a little while until we say a prayer over it?" No; you say: "Give us 
the house of God." And if there is a song to be sung at the obsequies what 
do you want? What does anybody want? The Marseillaise Hymn? God Save 
the Queen? Our own grand national air? No. They want the hymn with 
which they sang their old Christian mother into her last sleep, or they 
want sung the Sabbath-school hymn which their little girl sang the last 
Sabbath afternoon she was out before she got that awful sickness which 
broke your heart. I appeal to your common-sense. You know the most 
endearing institution on earth, the most popular institution on earth to-day, 
is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. A man is a fool that does not 
recognize it. 

The infidels say: "There is great liberty now for infidels; we never 
had such freedom of platform; infidelity shows its power from the fact 
that it is everywhere accepted, and it can say what it will." Why, my 
friends, infidelity is not half so blatant in our day as it was in the days of 
our fathers. Do you know that in the days of our fathers there' were pro- 
nounced infidels in public authority and they could get any political position? 
Let a man to-day declare himself antagonistic to the Christian religion, 
and what city wants him for mayor, what State wants him for governor, 
what nation wants him for president or for king? Let a man openly proclaim 
himself the enemy of our glorious Christianity, and he cannot get a majority 
of votes in any State, in any city, in any country, in any ward of America. 

Mr. Ingersoll, years ago, riding in a rail-car in Illinois, said: "What has 
Christianity ever done?" An old Christian woman said: "It has done one 
thing, anyhow; it has kept Mr. Ingersoll from being Governor of Illinois!" 
As I stood in the side room of the opera house at Peoria, Illinois, a 
prominent gentleman of that city said: "I can tell you the secret of that 
tremendous bitterness against Christianity." Said I: "What was it?" "Why," 
said he, "in this very house there was a great convention to nominate a 
governor, and there were three or four candidates. At the same time, there 
was in a church in this city a Sabbath-school convention, and it happened 
that one of the men who was in the Sabbath-school convention was also 
a member of the political convention. In the political convention, the name 
highest on the roll at that time and about to be nominated was the name 
of the great champion infidel. There was an adjournment between ballots, 
and in the afternoon, when the nominations were being made, a plain 
farmer got up and said: "Mr. Chairman, that nomination must not be made; 



294 REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

the Sunday-schools of Illinois will defeat him." That ended all prospect 
of his nomination. The Christian religion is mightier to-day than it ever was. 

Do you think that such a scene could be enacted now as was enacted in 
the days of Robespierre, when a shameless woman was elevated to a goddess, 
and was carried in a golden chair to a cathedral where incense was burned 
to her and people bowed down before her as a divine being, she taking 
the place of the Bible and God Almighty, while in the corridors of that 
cathedral were enacted such scenes of drunkenness and debauchery and 
obscenity as have never been witnessed? Do you believe such a thing 
could possibly occur in Christendom to-day? No, sir. The police, whether 
of Paris or New York, would swoop on it. I know infidelity makes a good 
deal of talk in our day. One infidel can make great excitement, but I will 
tell you on what principle it is. It is on the principle that if a man jump 
overboard from a Cunard steamer he makes more excitement than all the 
five hundred people that stay on the decks. But the fact that he jumps 
overboard— does that stop the ship? Does that wreck the five hundred pas- 
sengers? It makes great excitement when a man jumps from the lecturing 
platform, or from the pulpit, into infidelity; but does that keep the Bible and 
the Church from carrying their millions of passengers into the skies? 

They say, these men, that science is overcoming religion in our day. 
They look through the spectacles of the infidel scientists, and they say, "It 
is impossible that this book be true; people are finding it out; the Bible has 
got to go overboard; science is going to throw it overboard." Do you believe 
that the Bible account of the origin of life will be overthrown by infidel 
scientists who have fifty different theories about the origin of life? If they 
should come up in solid phalanx, all agreeing on one sentiment and one 
theory, perhaps Christianity might be damaged; but there are not so many 
differences of opinion inside the church as outside the church. People used 
to say, "there are so many different denominations of Christians— that shows 
there is nothing in religion/' I have to tell you that all denominations agree 
on the two or three or four radical doctrines of the Christian religion. 
They are unanimous in regard to Jesus Christ, and they are unanimous 
in regard to the divinity of the Scriptures. How is it on the other side? 
All split up, you cannot find two of them alike. Oh, it makes me sick to 
see these literary fops going along with a copy of Darwin under one arm 
and a case of transfixed grasshoppers and butterflies under the other arm, 
telling about the "survival of the fittest," and Huxley's protoplasm, and the 
nebular hypothesis. The fact is, that some naturalists just as soon as they 
find out the difference between the feelers of a wasp and the horns of a 
beetle, they begin to patronize the Almighty; while Agassiz, glorious Agassiz, 
who never made any pretension to being a Christian, puts both his feet on 
the doctrine of evolution, and says: "I see that many of the naturalists of 



T. DE WITT TALMAGE 295 

our day are adopting facts which do not bear observation, or have not passed 
under observation." These men warring with each other— Darwin warring 
against Lamarck, Wallace warring against Cope, even Herschel denouncing 
Ferguson. They do not agree about anything. They do not agree on em- 
bryology, do not agree on the gradation of the species. What do they agree 
on? Herschel writes a whole chapter on the errors of astronomy. La Place 
declares that the moon was not put in the right place. He says if it had 
been put four times further from the earth than it is now, there would be 
more harmony in the universe; but Lionville comes up just in time to prove 
that the moon was put in the right place. How many colors woven into 
the light? Seven, says Isaac Newton. Three, says David Brewster. How 
high is the Aurora Borealis? Two and a half miles, says Lias. One hundred 
and sixty-eight miles, says Twining. How far is the sun from the earth? 
Seventy-six million miles, says Lacalle. Eighty-two million miles, says Hum- 
boldt. Ninety million miles, says Henderson. One hundred and four mil- 
lion miles, says Mayer. Only a little difference of twenty-eight million miles! 
All split up among themselves— not agreeing on anything. They come 
and say that the churches of Jesus Christ are divided on the great doctrines. 
All united they are, in Jesus Christ, in the divinity of the Scriptures; while 
they come up and propose to render their verdict, and no two of them 
agree on that verdict. "Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed on a verdict?" 
asks the court or the clerk of the jury as they come in after having spent 
the whole night in deliberating. If the jury say "Yes, we have agreed," 
the verdict is recorded; but suppose one of the jurymen says, "I think the 
man was guilty of murder," and another says, "I think he was guilty of 
manslaughter in the second degree," and another man says, "I think he 
was guilty of assault and battery with intent to kill," the judge would say, 
"Go back to your room and bring in a verdict; agree on something; that is 
no verdict." 

Here these infidel scientists have empanelled themselves as a jury to 
decide this trial between Infidelity, the plaintiff, and Christianity, the de- 
fendant, and after being out for centuries they come in to render their verdict. 
Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed on a verdict? No, no. Then go 
back for another five hundred years and deliberate and agree on something. 
There is not a poor miserable wretch in the Tombs court to-morrow that 
could be condemned by a jury that did not agree on the verdict, and yet 
you expect us to give up our glorious Christianity to please these men who 
cannot agree on anything. 

Ah! my friends, the church of Jesus Christ instead of falling back is on 
the advance. I am certain it is on the advance. I see the glittering of swords, 
I hear the tramping of the troops, I hear the thunderings of parks of artil- 
lery. Oh my God and Saviour, I thank Thee that I have been permitted 



296 REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

to see this day— this day of Thy triumph, this day of the confusion of Thine 
enemies. O Lord God, take Thy sword from Thy thigh and ride forth to 
the victory. 

I am mightily encouraged because I find among other things that while 
this Christianity has been bombarded for centuries, infidelity has not de- 
stroyed one church, or crippled one minister, or uprooted one verse of 
one chapter of all the Bible. If that has been their magnificent record for 
the centuries that are past, what may we expect for the future? The church 
all the time getting the victory, and their shot and shell all gone. I have 
been examining their ammunition lately, I have looked all through their 
cartridge-boxes. They have not in the last twenty years advanced one new 
idea. They have utterly exhausted their ammunition in the battle against 
the church and against the Scriptures, while the sword of the Lord Almighty 
is as keen as it ever was. We are just getting our troops into line; they 
are coming up in companies and in regiments and in battalions, and you 
will hear a shout after a while that will make the earth quake and the 
heavens ring with Alleluia. It will be this: "Forward, the whole line." 

And then I find another most encouraging thought in the fact that 
the secular printing-press and the pulpit seem harnessed in the same team 
for the proclamation of the Gospel. Every Wall Street banker to-morrow in 
New York, every State Street banker to-morrow in Boston, every Third Street 
banker to-morrow in Philadelphia, every banker in the United States, 
and every merchant will have in his pocket a treatise on Christianity, a 
call to repentance, ten, twenty, or thirty passages of Scripture in the reports 
of sermons preached throughout these cities and throughout the land to- 
day. It will be so in Chicago, so in New Orleans, so in Charleston, so in 
Boston, so in Philadelphia, so everywhere. I know the tract societies are 
doing a grand and glorious work, but I tell you there is no power on earth 
to-day equal to the fact that the American printing-press is taking up the 
sermons which are preached to a few hundred or a few thousand people, 
on Monday morning and Monday evening, in the morning and evening 
papers, scattering that truth to the millions. What a thought it is! What an 
encouragement for every Christian man. 

Beside that, have you noticed that during the past few years every one 
of the doctrines of the Bible came under discussion in the secular press? 
Do you not remember a few years ago— I think not more than six or seven 
years ago— when every paper in the United States had an editorial on 
the subject: "Is there such a thing as future punishment?" It was the 
strangest thing that there should be a discussion in the secular papers on 
that subject, but every paper in the United States and in Christendom dis- 
cussed: "Is there such a thing as retribution?" I know there were small 
wits who made sport of the discussion, but there was not an intelligent 



T. DE WITT TALMAGE 297 

man on earth who as the result of that discussion did not ask himself the 
question: "What is going to be my eternal destiny?" So it was in regard 
to Tyndall's prayer gauge. Some seven or nine years ago you remember 
the secular papers discussed that, and with just as much earnestness as the 
religious papers, and there was not a man in Christendom who did not 
ask himself the question: "Is there anything in prayer? May the creature 
impress the Creator?" Oh, what a mighty fact, what a glorious fact, the 
secular printing-press and the pulpit of the Church of Jesus Christ harnessed 
in the same team. 

Then look at the International Series of Sunday-school lessons. Do you 
know that this afternoon, I suppose between three and five o'clock, there 
will be five million children studying the same lesson, a lesson prepared 
by the leading minds of the country, and printed in the papers, and then 
these subjects are discussed and given over to the teachers, who give them 
over to the children; so whereas once— and within our memory— the children 
nibbled here and there at a story of the Bible, now they are taken through 
from Genesis to Revelation, and we shall have five million children fore- 
stalled for Christianity. My soul is full of exultation. I feel as if I could 
shout— I will shout, "Alleluia, the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!" 

Then you notice a more significant fact still further— you have noticed if 
you have talked with people on the subject, that they are getting dis- 
satisfied with philosophy and science as a matter of comfort. They say it 
does not amount to anything when you have a dead child in the house. 
They tell you when they were sick and the door of the future seemed 
opening, the only comfort they could find was in the Gospel. People are 
having demonstrated all over the land that science and philosophy cannot 
solace the trouble and woes of the world, and they want some other religion, 
and they are taking Christianity, the only sympathetic religion that ever 
came into the world. You just take your scientific consolation into that room 
where a mother has lost her child. Try in that case your splendid doctrine 
of the "survival of the fittest." Tell her that child died because it was not 
worth as much as the other children. That is your "survival of the fittest." 
Go to that dying man and tell him to pluck up courage for the future. 
Use your transcendental phraseology upon him. Tell him he ought to be 
confident in "the great to be," and the "everlasting now," and the "eternal 
what-is-it." Just try your transcendentalism and your philosophy and your 
science on him. Go to that widowed soul, and tell her it was a geological 
necessity that her companion should be taken away from her, just as in 
the course of the world's history the megatherium had to pass out of exist- 
ence; and then you go on in your scientific consolation until you get to the 
sublime fact that fifty million years from now we ourselves may be scientific 
specimens on a geological shelf, petrified specimens of an extinct human 



298 REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

race. And after you have got all through with your consolation, if the 
poor afflicted soul is not crazed by it, I will send forth from this church 
the plainest Christian we have, and with one half hour of prayer and 
reading of Scripture promises, the tears will be wiped away, and the house 
from floor to cupola will be flooded with the calmness of an Indian summer 
sunset. There is where I see the triumph of Christianity. People are dissatis- 
fied with everything else. They want God. They want Jesus Christ. 

Talk about the exact sciences, there is only one exact science. It is not 
mathematics. Taylor's logarithms have many imperfections. The French 
metric system has many imperfections. The only exact science is Christianity 
—the only thing under which you can appropriately write: "Quod erat 
demonstrandum." You tell me that two and two make four. I do not dispute 
it, but it is not so plain that two and two make four as that the Lord God 
Almighty made this world. And for man, the sinner, He sent His only be- 
gotten Son to die. 

In this trial that has been going on between Infidelity and Christianity, 
we have only called one witness, and that was Robert G. Ingersoll. He 
testified in behalf of Infidelity. We have put one witness on the stand. We 
have shown that his testimony was not worthy of being received. We showed 
it was founded on ignorance geological, ignorance chemical, ignorance 
astronomical, ignorance geographical, and if he would misrepresent in one 
case he would misrepresent in all cases. We had one witness on the stand. 
I put others on the stand this morning. I put on the church on earth and 
all the church in heaven. Not fifty, not a thousand, not a million, but all 
the church on earth and all the redeemed in heaven. Whose testimony is 
worth the most? 

You tell me James A. Garfield was inaugurated President of the United 
States on the fourth of March last. How do I know it? You tell me there 
were twenty thousand persons who distinctly heard his inaugural address. 
I deny both. I deny that he was inaugurated. I deny that his inaugural 
address was delivered. You ask why? I did not see it. I did not hear it. But 
you say that there were twenty thousand persons who did see and hear 
him. I say I cannot take it anyhow; I did not see and hear him. Whose 
testimony will you take? You will not take my testimony. You say, "You 
know nothing about it, you were not there; let us have the testimony of 
the twenty thousand persons who stood before the capitol and heard that 
magnificent inaugural." Why, of course, that is as your common-sense 
dictates. 

Now, here are some men who say they have never seen Christ crowned 
in the heart and they do not believe it is ever done. There is a group of 
men who say they have never heard the voice of Christ, they have never 
heard the voice of God. They do not believe it ever transpired, or was 



T. DE WITT TALMAGE 299 

ever heard— that anything like it ever occurred. I point to twenty, a hundred 
thousand or a million people who say: "Christ was crowned in our heart's 
affections, we have seen Him and felt Him in our soul, and we have heard 
His voice; we have heard it in storm and darkness; we have heard it again 
and again." Whose testimony will you take? These men, the Ingersolls of 
earth, who say they have not heard the voice of Christ, have not seen the 
coronation; or will you take the thousands and tens of thousands of Chris- 
tians who testify of what they saw with their own eyes and heard with their 
own ears? 

Father Pierson, after fifty years' experience of the power of godliness in 
his soul, put his testimony against Robert G. Ingersoll's. Ask this man 
whether, when he buried his dead, the religion of Jesus Christ was not a 
consolation. Ask him if through the long years of his pilgrimage the Lord 
ever forsook him. Ask him when he looks forward to the future, if he has 
not a peace and a joy and a consolation the world cannot take away. Put 
his testimony of what he has seen and what he has felt opposite to the 
testimony of a man who says he has not seen anything on the subject or 
felt anything on the subject— confesses he has not tried it. Will you take 
the testimony of people who have not seen, or people who have seen? 

You say morphia puts one to sleep. You say in time of sickness it is 
very useful. I deny it. Morphia never puts anybody to sleep, it never allevi- 
ates pain. You ask why I say that. I have never tried it, I never took it. 
I deny that morphia is any soothing to the nerves, or any quiet in times 
of sickness. I deny that morphia ever put anybody to sleep; but here are 
twenty persons who say they have all felt the soothing effects of a physician's 
prescribing morphine. Whose testimony will you take? Those who took the 
medicine, or my testimony, I never having taken the medicine? Here is 
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, an anodyne for all trouble, the mightiest medicine 
that ever came down to earth. Here is a man who says: "I don't believe in 
it; there is no power in it." Here are other people who say, "We have found 
out its power, and know its soothing influence; it has cured us." Whose 
testimony will you take in regard to this healing medicine? 

I feel that I have convinced every man in this house that it is utter folly 
to take the testimony of those who have never tried the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ in their own heart and life. We have tens of thousands of witnesses. 
I believe you are ready to take their testimony. 

Young man, do not be ashamed to be a friend of the Bible. Do not put 
your thumb in your vest, as young men sometimes do, and swagger about, 
talking of the glorious light of the nineteenth century, and of there being 
no need of a Bible. They have the light of nature in India and China 
and in all the dark places of the earth. Did you ever hear that the light 
of nature gave them comfort for their trouble? They have lancets to cut 



300 REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

and juggernauts to crush, but no comfort. Ah! my friends, you had better 
stop your scepticism. Suppose you are put in this crisis. O father! Your 
child is dying. What are you going to say to her? 

Colonel Ethan Allen was a famous infidel in his day. His wife was a very 
consecrated woman. The mother instructed the daughter in the truths of 
Christianity. The daughter sickened and was about to die, and she said to 
her father: "Father, shall I take your instruction? or shall I take mother's 
instruction? I am going to die now; I must have this matter decided." That 
man, who had been loud in his infidelity, said to his dying daughter: "My 
dear, you had better take your mother's religion." My advice is the same 
to you, O young man, you had better take your mother's religion. You 
know how it comforted her. You know what she said to you when she 
was dying. You had better take your mother's religion. 



Victory for Man 

ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL 



Born, Dresden, New York, August 11, 1833; died, Dobhs 
Ferry, New York, July 21, 1899. Meager formal school- 
ing. Taught school briefly, studied law, was admitted to 
the Illinois bar, 1854. Raised and commanded a cavalry 
regiment for the Union army. Attorney- general of Illinois, 
1867-1869. Nationally known as lawyer, 'political cam- 
paigner for Republican party, and public lecturer. 



T adies and Gentlemen: Nothing can be more certain 
Li than that no human being can by any possibility 
control his thought. We are in this world— we see, we hear, we feel, we taste; 
and everything in Nature makes an impression upon the brain, and that 
wonderful something, enthroned there with these materials, weaves what we 
call thought, and the brain can no more help thinking than the heart can help 
beating. The blood pursues its old accustomed round without our will. The 
heart beats without asking leave of us, and the brain thinks in spite of all 
that we can do. This being true, no human being can justly be held respon- 
sible for his thought any more than for the beating of his heart, any more 
than for the course pursued by the blood, any more than for breathing 
air. And yet for thousands of years thought has been thought to be a 
crime, and thousands and millions have threatened us with eternal 
fire if we give the product of that brain. Each brain, in my judgment, 
is a field where Nature sows the seeds of thought, and thought is the crop 
that man reaps, and it certainly cannot be a crime to gather it; it certainly 
cannot be a crime to tell it, which simply amounts to the right to sell your 

McVicker's Theatre, Chicago, Illinois, Sunday, November 12, 1882. The Chicago 
Tribune, November 13, 1882, p. 6. (The tide of this speech has been supplied by 
the editors.) 

301 



302 REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

crop or to exchange your product for the product of some other man's brain. 
That is all it is. Most brains— at least some— are rather poor fields, and the 
orthodox worst of all. That field produces mostly sorrel and mullein, while 
there are fields which, like the tropic world, are filled with growth, and where 
you find the vine and the palm, royal children of the sun and brain. I then 
stand simply for absolute freedom of thought— absolute, and I don't believe, 
if there is a God, that it will be or can be pleasing to Him to see one of His 
children afraid to express what he thinks. And, if I were God, I never would 
cease making men until I succeeded in making one grand enough to tell 
his honest opinion. 

Now there has been a struggle, you know, a long time between the believers 
in the natural and the supernatural— between gentlemen who are going to 
reward us in another world and those who propose to make life worth living 
here and now. In all ages the priest, the medicine man, the magician, the 
astrologer, in other words, gentlemen who have traded upon the fear and 
ignorance of their fellow-man in all countries, they have sought to make their 
living out of others. There was a time when a God presided over every 
department of human interest, when a man about to take a voyage bribed the 
priest of Neptune so that he might have a safe journey, and, when he came 
back, he paid more, telling the priest that he was infinitely obliged to him 
that he had kept waves from the sea and storms in their caves. And so, when 
one was sick he went to a priest; when one was about to take a journey he 
visited the priest of Mercury; if he were going to war he consulted the repre- 
sentative of Mars. We have gone along. When the poor agriculturist plowed 
his ground and put in the seed he went to the priest of some god and paid 
him to keep off the frost. And the priest said he would do it; "but," added 
the priest, ' you must have faith." If the frost came early he said, "You didn't 
have faith." And besides all that he says to him: "Anything that has hap- 
pened badly, after all, was for your good." Well, we found out, day by day, 
that a good boat for the purposes of navigating the sea was better than 
prayers, better than the influence of priests; and you had better have a good 
Captain attending to business than thousands of priests ashore praying. 

We also found that we could cure some diseases, and just as soon as we 
found that we could cure diseases we dismissed the priest. We have left him 
out now of all of them except, it may be, cholera and smallpox. When 
visited by a plague some people get frightened enough to go back to the 
old idea— go back to the priest, and the priest says, "It has been sent as a 
punishment." Well, sensible people began to look about; they saw that the 
good died as readily as the bad; they saw that this disease would attack the 
dimpled child in the cradle and allow the murderer to go unpunished; and 
so they began to think in time that it was not sent as a punishment; that it 
was a natural result; and so the priest stepped out of medicine. 



ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL 303 

In agriculture we need him no longer; he has nothing to do with the 
crops. All the clergymen in this world can never get one drop of rain out of 
the sky; and all the clergymen in the civilized world could not save one 
human life if they tried it. 

"Oh, but," they say, "we do not expect a direct answer to prayer; it is the 
reflex action we are after." It is like a man endeavoring to lift himself up by 
the straps of his boots; he will never do it, but he will get a great deal of use- 
ful exercise. 

The missionary goes to some pagan land, and there finds a man praying 
to a god of stone, and it excites the wrath of the missionary. I ask you tonight, 
Does not that stone god answer prayer just as well as ours? Does he not 
cause rain? Does he not delay frost? Does he not snatch the ones that we 
love from the grasp of death, precisely the same as ours? Yet we have 
ministers that are still engaged in that business. They tell us that they have 
been "called"; that they do not go at their professions as other people do, 
but they are "called"; that God, looking over the world, carefully selects his 
priests, his ministers, and his exhorters. 

I don't know. They say their calling is sacred. I say to you tonight that 
every kind of business that is honest, that a man engages in for the purpose 
of feeding his wife and children, for the purpose of building up his home, 
and for the purpose of feeding and clothing the ones he loves— that business 
is sacred. They tell me that statesmen and poets, philosophers, heroes, and 
scientists, and inventors come by chance; that all other departments depend 
entirely upon luck; but when God wants exhorters He selects. 

They also tell me that it is infinitely wicked to attack the Christian re- 
ligion, and when I speak of the Christian religion I do not refer especially to 
the Christianity of the New Testament; I refer to the Christianity of the 
orthodox church, and when I refer to the clergy I refer to the clergy of the 
orthodox church. There was a time when men of genius were in the pulpits 
of the orthodox church; that time is past. When you find a man with brains 
now occupying an orthodox pulpit you will find him touched with heresy— 
every one of them. 

How do they get most of these ministers? There will be a man in the 
neighborhood not very well— not having constitution enough to be wicked; 
and it instantly suggests itself to everybody who sees him he would make an 
excellent minister. There are so many other professions, so many cities to be 
built, so many railways to be constructed, so many poems to be sung, so much 
music to be composed, so many papers to edit, so many books to read, so 
many splendid things, so many avenues to distinction and glory, so many 
things beckoning from the horizon of the future to every great and splendid 
man that the pulpit has to put up with the leavings, ravelings, selvages. 

These preachers say, "How can any man be wicked enough and infamous 



304 REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

enough to attack our religion and to take from the world the solace of 
orthodox Christianity?" What is that solace? Let us be honest. What is it? If 
the Christian religion be true, the grandest, greatest, noblest of the world 
are now in Hell, and the narrowest and meanest are now in Heaven. Hum- 
boldt, the Shakespeare of science, the most learned man of the most learned 
nation, with a mind grand enough to grasp not simply this globe, but this 
constellation— a man who shed light upon the whole earth— a man who 
honored human nature, and who won all his victories on the fields of thought 
—that man, pure and upright, noble beyond description, if Christianity be 
true, is in Hell this moment. That is what they call "solace"; "tidings of great 
joy." La Place, who read the heavens like an open book, who enlarged the 
horizon of human thought, is there too. Beethoven, master of melody and 
harmony, who added to the joy of human life, and who has borne upon the 
wings of harmony and melody millions of spirits to the height of joy, with his 
heart still filled with melody— he is in Hell today. Robert Burns, poet of love 
and liberty, and from his heart, like a spring gurgling and running down the 
highways, his poems have filled the world with music. They have added 
lustre to human love. That man who, in four lines, gave all the philosophy 
of life- 

To make a happy fireside clime 

For weans and wife 
Is the true pathos and sublime 

Of human life. 

—he is there with the rest. Charles Dickens, whose genius will be a perpetual 
shield, saving thousands and millions of children from blows, who did more 
to make us tender with children than any other writer that ever touched a 
pen— he is there with the rest, according to our Christian religion. A little 
while ago there died in this country a philosopher— Ralph Waldo Emerson— 
a man of the loftiest ideal, a perfect model of integrity, whose mind was like 
a placid lake and reflected truths like stars. If the Christian religion be true, 
he is in perdition today. And yet he sowed the seeds of thought, and raised 
the whole world intellectually. And Longfellow, whose poems, tender as the 
dawn, have gone into millions of homes, not an impure, not a stained word 
in them all; but he was not a Christian. He did not believe in the "tidings 
of great joy." He didn't believe that God so loved the world that He intended 
to damn most everybody. And now he has gone to his reward. And Charles 
Darwin— a child of Nature— one who knew more about his mother than any 
other child she had. What is philosophy? It is to account for phenomena by 
which we are surrounded— that is to find the hidden cord that unites every- 
thing. Charles Darwin threw more light upon the problem of human exist- 
ence than all the priests who ever lived from Melchisedek to the last ex- 



ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL 305 

horter. He would have traversed this globe on foot had it been possible to 
have found one new fact or to have corrected one error that he had made. 
No nobler man has lived— no man who has studied with more reverence (and 
by reverence I mean simply one who lives and studies for the truth)— no 
man who studied with more reverence than he. And yet, according to 
orthodox religion, Charles Darwin is in Hell. Consolation! So, if Christianity 
be true, Shakespeare, the greatest man who ever touched this planet, within 
whose brain were the fruits of all thought past, the seeds of all to be— 
Shakespeare, who was an intellectual ocean toward which all rivers ran, and 
from which now the isles and continents of thought receive their dew and 
rain— that man who has added more to the intelligence of the world than 
any other who ever lived— that man, whose creations will live as long as man 
has imagination, and who has given more happiness upon the stage and more 
instruction than has flown from all the pulpits of this earth— that man is in 
Hell, too. And Harriet Martineau, who did as much for English liberty as 
any man, brave and free— she is there. "George Eliot," the greatest woman 
the English-speaking people ever produced— she is with the rest. And this is 
called "Tidings of Great Joy." 

Who are in heaven? How could there be much of a Heaven without the 
men I have mentioned— the great men that have endeavored to make the 
world grander— such men as Voltaire, such men as Diderot, such men as the 
Encyclopedists, such men as Hume, such men as Bruno, such men as Thomas 
Paine? If Christianity is true, that man who spent his life in breaking chains 
is now wearing the chains of God; that man who wished to break down the 
prison walls of tyranny is now in the prison of the most merciful Christ. It 
will not do. I can hardly express to you today my contempt for such a doc- 
trine; and if it be true, I make my choice today, and I prefer Hell. 

Who is in Heaven? John Calvin! John Knox! Jonathan Edwards! Tor- 
quemada— the builders of dungeons, the men who have obstructed the march 
of the human race. These are the men who are in Heaven; and who else? 
Those who never had brain enough to harbor a doubt. And they ask me: 
"How can you be wicked enough to attack the Christian religion?" 

"Oh," but they say, "God will never forgive you if you attack the orthodox 
religion." Now, when I read the history of this world, and when I think of 
the experience of my fellow-men, when I think of the millions living in 
poverty and when I know that in the very air we breathe and in the sunlight 
that visits our homes there lurks an assassin ready to take our lives, and 
even when we believe we are in the fullness of health and joy, they are 
undermining us with their contagion— when I know that we are surrounded 
by all these evils, and when I think of what man has suffered, I do not wonder 
if God can forgive man, but I often ask myself, "Can man forgive God?" 

There is another thing. Some of these ministers have talked about me, 



306 



REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 



and have made it their business to say unpleasant things. Among others the 
Rev. Mr. Talmage, of Brooklyn— a man of not much imagination, but of 
most excellent judgment— charges that I am a "blasphemer." A frightful 
charge! Terrible, if true! 

What is blasphemy? It is a sin, as I understand, against God. Is God 
infinite? He is, so they say; He is infinite; absolutely conditionless. Can I 
injure the conditionless? No. Can I sin against anything that I cannot injure? 
No. That is a perfectly plain proposition. I can injure my fellow-man, be- 
cause he is a conditioned being, and I can help to change those conditions. 
He must have air; he must have food; he must have clothing; he must have 
shelter; but God is conditionless, and I cannot by any possibility affect Him. 
Consequently I cannot sin against Him. But I can sin against my fellow-man, 
so that I ought to be a thousand times more fearful of doing injustice than 
of uttering blasphemy. There is no blasphemy but injustice, and there is no 
worship except the practice of justice. It is a thousand times more important 
that we should love our fellow-men than that we should love God. It is better 
to love wife and children than to love Jesus Christ. He is dead; they are alive. 
I can make their lives happy and fill all their hours with the fullness of joy. 
That is my religion; and the holiest temple ever erected beneath the stars is 
the home: the holiest altar is the fireside. 

What is this blasphemy? First, it is a geographical question. There was a 
time when it was blasphemy in Jerusalem to say that Christ was God. In this 
country it is now blasphemy to say that He was not. It is blasphemy in Con- 
stantinople to deny that Mohamet was the prophet of God; it is blasphemy 
here to say that he was. It is a geographical question; you cannot tell whether 
it is blasphemy or not without looking at the map. What is blasphemy? It is 
what the mistake says about the fact. It is what the last year's leaf says about 
this year's bud. It is the last cry of the defeated priest. Blasphemy is the 
little breastwork behind which hypocrisy hides; behind which mental im- 
potency feels safe. There is no blasphemy but the avowal of thought, and he 
who speaks what he thinks blasphemes. 

What is the next thing? That I have had the hardihood— it doesn't take 
much— to attack the sacred Scriptures. I have simply given my opinion; and 
yet they tell me that that book is holy— that you can take rags, make pulp, 
put ink on it, bind it in leather, and make something holy. The Catholics 
have a man for a Pope; the Protestants have a book. The Catholics have 
the best of it. If they elect an idiot he will not live forever, and it is impossible 
for us to get rid of the barbarisms in our book. The Catholics said, "We will 
not let the common people read the Bible." That was right. If it is necessary 
to believe it in order to get to Heaven no man should run the risk of reading 
it. To allow a man to read the Bible on such conditions is to set a trap for his 
soul. The right way is never to open it, and when you get to the day of 



ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL 307 

judgment, and they ask you if you believe it say, "Yes, I have never read it." 
The Protestant gives the book to a poor man and says, "Read it. You are at 
liberty to read it." "Well, suppose I don't believe it, when I get through?" 
"Then you will be damned." No man should be allowed to read it on those 
conditions. And yet Protestants have done that infinitely cruel thing. If I 
thought it was necessary to believe it I would say never read another line in 
it but just believe it and stick to it. And yet these people really think that 
there is something miraculous about that book. They regard it as a fetish— a 
kind of amulet— a something charmed, that will keep off evil spirits, or bad 
luck, stop bullets, and do a thousand handy things for the preservation of life. 

I heard a story upon that subject. You know that thousands of them are 
printed in the Sunday-school books. Here is one they don't print. There was 
a poor man who had belonged to the church, but he got cold, and he rather 
neglected it, and he had bad luck in his business, and he went down and 
down and down until he hadn't a dollar— not a thing to eat; and his wife said 
to him, "John, this comes of your having abandoned the church. This comes 
of your having done away with family worship. Now, I beg of you, let's go 
back." Well, John said it wouldn't do any harm to try. So he took down the 
Bible, blew the dust off it, read a little from a chapter, and had family wor- 
ship. As he was putting it up he opened it again, and there was a $10 bill 
between the leaves. He rushed out to the butcher's and bought meat, to the 
grocer's and bought tea and bread, and butter and eggs, and rushed back 
home and got them cooked, and the house Was filled with the perfume of 
food; and he sat down at the table, tears in every eye and a smile on every 
face. She said, "What did I tell your 5 " Just then there was a knock on the 
door, and in came a constable who arrested him for passing a $10 counterfeit 
bill. 

They tell me that I ought not to attack the Bible— that I have misrepre- 
sented it, and among other things that I have said that, according to the Bible, 
the world was made of nothing. Well, what was it made of? They say God 
created everything. Consequently, there must have been nothing when He 
commenced. If He didn't make it of nothing what did He make it of? Where 
there was nothing, He made something. Yes; out of what? I don't know. 
This doctor of divinity, and I should think such a divinity would need a 
doctor, says that God made the universe out of His omnipotence. Why not 
out of His omniscience, or His omnipresence? Omnipotence is not a raw 
material. It is the something to work raw material with. Omnipotence is sim- 
ply all powerful, and what good would strength do with nothing? The weak- 
est man ever born could lift as much nothing as God. And he could do as 
much with it after he got it lifted. And yet a doctor of divinity tells me that 
this world was made of omnipotence. And right here let me say I find even 
in the mind of the clergyman the seeds of infidelity. He is trying to explain 



308 REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

things. That is a bad symptom. The greater the miracle the greater the 
reward for believing it. God cannot afford to reward a man for believing any- 
thing reasonable. Why, even the Scribes and Pharisees would believe a rea- 
sonable thing. Do you suppose God is to crown you with eternal joy and 
give you a musical instrument for believing something where the evidence 
is clear? No, sir. The larger the miracle the more grace. And let me advise 
the ministers of Chicago and of this country, never to explain a miracle; it 
cannot be explained. If you succeed in explaining it, the miracle is gone. 
If you fail you are gone. My advice to the clergy is use assertion, just say 
"it is so," and the larger the miracle the greater the glory reaped by the 
eternal. And yet this man is trying to explain, pretending that He had some 
raw material of some kind on hand. 

And then I objected to the fact that He didn't make the sun until the 
fourth day, and that, consequently, the grass could not have grown— could 
not have thrown its mantle of green over the shoulders of the hill— and that 
the trees would not blossom and cast their shade upon the sod without some 
sunshine; and what does this man say? Why, that the rocks, when they 
crystallized, emitted light, even enough to raise a crop by. And he says 
"vegetation might have depended on the glare of volcanoes in the moon." 
What do you think would be the fate of agriculture depending on "the glare 
of volcanoes in the moon?" Then he says, "the aurora borealis." Why, you 
couldn't raise cucumbers by the aurora borealis. And he says "liquid rivers 
of molten granite." I would like to have had a farm on that stream. He guesses 
everything of the kind except lightning-bugs and foxfire. Now, think of that 
explanation in the last half of the nineteenth century by a minister. The 
truth is, the gentleman who wrote the account knew nothing of astronomy- 
knew as little as the modern preacher does— just about the same; and if they 
don't know more about the next world than they do about this, it is hardly 
worth while talking with them on the subject. There was a time, you know, 
when the minister was the educated man in the country, and when, if you 
wanted to know anything, you asked him. Now you do if you don't. So I 
find this man expounding the flood, and he says it was not very wet. He 
begins to doubt whether God had water enough to cover the whole earth. 
Why not stand by his book? He says that some of the animals got in there 
to keep out of the wet. I believe that is the way the Democrats got to the 
polls last Tuesday. 

Another divine says that God would have drowned them all, but it was 
purely for the sake of economy that He saved any of them. Just think of 
that! According to this Christian religion all the people in the world were 
totally depraved through the fall, and God found He could not do anything 
with them, so He drowned them. Now, if God wanted to get up a flood big 
enough to drown sin, why did He not get up a flood big enough to drown 



ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL 309 

the snake? That was His mistake. Now, these people say that if Jonah had 
walked rapidly up and down the whale's belly he would have avoided the 
action of its gastric-juice. Imagine Jonah sitting in the whale's mouth, on 
the back of a molar-tooth; and yet this doctor of divinity would have us 
believe that the infinite God of the universe was sitting under his gourd 
and made the worm that was at the foot of Jonah's vine. Great business. 

David is said to have been a man after God's own heart, and if you will 
read the twenty-eighth chapter of Chronicles you will find that David died 
full of years and honors. So I find in the great book of prophecy, concerning 
Solomon, "He shall reign in peace and quietness, he shall be my son, and I 
shall be his father, and I will preserve his Kingdom." Was that true"? 

It won't do. But they say God couldn't do away with slavery suddenly, 
nor with polygamy all at once— that He had to do it gradually— that if He 
had told this man you mustn't have slaves, and one man that he must have 
one wife, and one wife that she must have one husband, He would have 
lost the control over them, notwithstanding all the miraculous power. Is it 
not wonderful that, when they did all these miracles, nobody paid any atten- 
tion to them? Isn't it wonderful that, in Egypt, when they performed these 
wonders— when the waters were turned into blood, when the people were 
smitten with disease and covered with horrible animals— isn't it wonderful 
that it had no influence on them? Do you know why all these miracles didn't 
effect the Egyptians? They were there at the time. Isn't it wonderful, too, 
that the Jews who had been brought from bondage— had followed a cloud 
by day and a pillar of fire by night— who had been miraculously fed, and for 
whose benefit water had leaked from the rocks and followed them up and 
down hill through all their journeying— isn't it wonderful, when they had 
seen the earth open and their companions swallowed, when they had seen 
God Himself write in robes of flames from Sinai's crags, when they had seen 
Him talking face to face with Moses— isn't it a little wonderful that He had 
no more influence over them? They were there at the time. And that is the 
reason they didn't mind it— they were there. And yet, with all these miracles, 
this God could not prevent polygamy and slavery. Was there no room on the 
two tables of stone to put two more commandments? Better have written 
them on the back, then. Better have left the others all off and put these two 
on. Man shall not enslave his brother, you shall not live on unpaid labor, 
and the one man shall have the one wife. If these two had been written and 
the other ten left off, it would have been a thousand times better for this 
world. 

But they say, God works gradually. No hurry about it. He is not gradual 
about keeping Sunday, because, if he met a man picking up sticks, He killed 
him; but in other things He is gradual. Suppose we wanted now to break 
certain cannibals of eating missionaries— wanted to stop them from eating 



3IO REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

them raw? Of course we would not tell them, in the first place, it was wrong. 
That would not do. We would induce them to cook them. That would be 
the first step toward civilization. We would have them stew them. We would 
not say it is wrong to eat missionary but it is wrong to eat missionary raw. 
Then, after they began stewing them, we would put in a little mutton— not 
enough to excite suspicion but just a little, and so, day by day, we would 
put in a little more mutton and a little less missionary until, in about 
what the Bible calls "the fullness of time," we would have clear mutton and 
no missionary. That is God's way. 

The next great charge against me is that I have disgraced my parents by 
expressing my honest thoughts. No man can disgrace his parents that way. 
I want my children to express their real opinions, whether they agree with 
mine or not. I want my children to find out more than I have found, and 
I would be gratified to have them discover the errors I have made. And if my 
father and mother are still alive I feel and know that I am pursuing a course 
of which they would approve. I am true to my manhood. But think of it! 
Suppose the father of Dr. Talmage had been a Methodist and his mother an 
infidel. Then what? Would he have to disgrace them both to be a Presby- 
terian? The disciples of Christ, according to this doctrine, disgraced their 
parents. The founder of every new religion, according to this doctrine, was 
a disgrace to his father and mother. Now there must have been a time when 
a Talmage was not a Presbyterian, and the one that left something else to 
join that church disgraced his father and mother. Why, if this doctrine be 
true why do you send missionaries to other lands and ask those people to 
disgrace their parents? If this doctrine be true nobody has religious liberty 
except foundlings; and it should be written over every Foundling Hospital: 
"Home for Religious Liberty/' It won't do. 



The next argument in favor of the "sacred Scriptures" is the argument of 
numbers; and this minister congratulates himself that the infidels could not 
carry a precinct, or a county, or a State in the United States. Well, I tell you, 
they can come proportionately near it— just in proportion that that part of the 
country is educated. The whole world doesn't move together in one life. 
There has to be some man to take a step forward and the people follow; and 
when they get where that man was, some other Titan has taken another step, 
and you can see him there on the great mountain of progress. That is why 
the world moves. There must be pioneers, and if nobody is right except he 
who is with the majority, then we must turn and walk toward the setting 
sun. He says "We will settle this by suffrage." The Christian religion was 
submitted to a popular vote in Jerusalem, and what was the result? "Crucify 
Him!" An infamous result, showing that you can't depend on the vote of 
barbarians. But I am told that there are 300,000,000 of Christians in the 



ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL 3 1 1 

world. Well, what of it? There are more Buddhists. And they say, what a 
number of Bibles are printed!— more Bibles than any other book. Does this 
prove anything? True, because more of them. Suppose you should find 
published in the New York Herald something about you, and you should go 
to the editor and tell him: "That is a lie," and he should say: "That can't 
be; the Herald has the largest circulation of any paper in the world." Three 
hundred millions of Christians, and here are the nations that prove the 
truth of Christianity: Russia, 80,000,000 of Christians. I am willing to admit 
it; a country without freedom of speech, without freedom of press— a country 
in which every mouth is a bastile and every tongue a prisoner for life— a 
country in which assassins are the best men in it. They call that Christian. 
Girls sixteen years of age for having spoken of human liberty are now work- 
ing in Siberian mines. That is a Christian country. Only a little while ago 
a man shot at the Emperor twice. The Emperor was protected by his armor. 
The man was convicted, and they asked him if he wished religious consola- 
tion. "No." "Do you believe in a God?" "No; if there was a God there would 
be no Russia." Sixteen millions of Christians in Spain— Spain that never 
touched a shore except as a robber— Spain that took the gold and silver of the 
New World and used it as an engine of oppression in the Old— a country in 
which cruelty was worship, in which murder was prayer— a country where 
flourished the inquisition— I admit Spain is a Christian country. If you don't 
believe it I do. Read the history of Holland, read the history of South 
America, read the history of Mexico— a chapter of cruelty beyond the power 
of language to express. I admit that Spain is orthodox. If you will go there 
you will find the man who robs you and asks God to forgive you— a country 
where infidelity hasn't made much headway, but, thank God, where there 
are such men as Castelar and others, who begin to see that one school house 
is equal to three cathedrals and one teacher worth all the priests. Italy is 
another Christian nation, with 28,000,000 of Christians. In Italy lives the 
only authorized agent of God, the Pope. For hundreds of years Italy was the 
beggar of the earth, and held out both hands. Gold and silver flowed from 
every land into her palms, and she became covered with nunneries, monas- 
teries, and the pilgrims of the world. 

Italy was sacred dust. Her soil was a perpetual blessing, her sky was an 
eternal smile. Italy was guilty not simply of the death of the Catholic Church, 
but Italy was dead and buried and would have been in her grave still had it 
not been for Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Cavour. When the prophecy of Gari- 
baldi shall be fulfilled, when the priests, with spades in their hands, shall dig 
ditches to drain the Pontine marshes, when the monasteries shall be fac- 
tories, when the whirling wheels of industry shall drown the drowsy and 
hypocritical prayers, then, and not till then, will Italy be great and free. Italy 
is the only instance in our history and in the history of the world, so far as 
we know, of the resurrection of a nation. She is the first fruits of them that 



312 REVEALED RELIGION VS. THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

sleep. Portugal is another Christian country. She made her living in the 
slave trade for centuries. I admit that all the blessings that that country en- 
joyed flowed naturally from Catholicism, and we believe in the same Scrip- 
tures. If you don't believe it, read the history of the persecution of the 
Jewish people. I admit that Germany is a Christian nation; that is, Christians 
are in power. When the bill was introduced for the purpose of ameliorating 
the condition of the Jews, Bismarck spoke against it, and said, "Germany is 
a Christian nation, and therefore we cannot pass the bill." Austria is another 
Christian nation. If you don't believe it, read the history of Hungary, and, 
if you still have doubts, read the history of the partition of Poland. But there 
is one good thing in that country. They believe in education, and education 
is the enemy of ecclesiasticism. Every thoroughly educated man is his own 
church, and his own Pope, and his own priest. They tell me that the United 
States— our country— is Christian. I deny it. It is neither Christian or pagan; 
it is human. Our fathers retired all the gods from politics. Our fathers laid 
down the doctrine that the right to govern comes from the consent of the 
governed, and not from the clouds. Our fathers knew that if they put an 
infinite God in the Constitution there would be no room left for the people. 
Our fathers used the language of Lincoln, and they made a Government for 
the people by the people. This is not a Christian country. 



The Bible is not inspired, and ministers know nothing about another world. 
They don't know. I am satisfied there is no world of eternal pain. If there is 
a world of joy, so much the better. I have never put out the faintest star of 
human hope that ever trembled in the night of life. There was a time when 
I was not; after that I was; now I am. And it is just as probable that I will 
live again as it was that I could have lived before I did. Let it go. Ah! but 
what will life be? The world will be here. Men and women will be here. 
The page of history will be open. The walls of the world will be adorned 
with art, the niches with sculpture; music will be here, and all there is of 
life and joy. And there will be homes here, and the fireside, and there will 
be a common hope without a common fear. Love will be here, and love is the 
only bow on life's dark cloud. Love was the first to dream of immortality. 
Love is morning and the evening star. It shines upon the child; it sheds its 
radiance upon the peaceful tomb. Love is the mother of beauty— the mother 
of melody, for music is its voice. Love is the builder of every hope, the 
kindler of every fire on every hearth. Love is the enchanter, the magician 
that changes worthless things to joy, and makes right royal Kings and Queens 
out of common clay. Love is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart. 
Without that divine passion, without that divine sway, we are less than 
beasts, and with it earth is heaven and we are gods. 



CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 



In 1881, thirty-three years after the inception of the 
movement, and thirty-nine years before the achievement 
of its goal, the first volume of History of Woman Suffrage 
was published. The authors of this work, Elizabeth 
Stanton, Susan Anthony, and Matilda Gage, closed their 
Introduction with these words: 

That equal rights for woman have not long ago been 
secured, is due to causes beyond the control of the actors 
in this reform. "The success of a movement," says Lecky, 
"depends much less upon the force of its arguments, or 
upon the ability of its advocates, than the predisposition of 
society to receive it." 

The suffrage movement, during its more than seventy 
years upon the American scene, lacked neither able ad- 
vocates nor forceful arguments, but it was not until 
after all three of these ladies were in their graves that 
society, through its elected representatives, was disposed 
to amend the Federal Constitution to permit women to 
vote. 

The organized campaign for woman's rights had its 
beginnings in 1848 in Seneca Falls, N.Y., home of 
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with the calling of the first 
Woman's Rights Convention in history. The idea of such 
a convention had originated several years before, when 
in 1840 a group of women delegates to a World's Anti- 
Slavery Convention in London had been barred from 

313 



314 CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 

taking their seats. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Stanton, 
indignant at this discrimination against properly ac- 
credited delegates solely because of their sex, decided 
then and there that woman, as well as the Negro, stood 
in need of outspoken champions of her rights. 

The Declaration of Woman's Rights drawn up and 
adopted at Seneca Falls, and adopted again two weeks 
later by a similar convention in Rochester, proved an 
effective rallying cry. Local suffrage societies sprang up 
in many parts of the country. The first National Woman's 
Rights Convention was held in Worcester, Massachusetts, 
in October, 1850, with delegates from eleven states at- 
tending. National conventions were held annually dur- 
ing the next decade, and the battle for woman's rights 
made remarkable progress until interrupted by the out- 
break of the Civil War. When, after the war, the 
fourteenth and fifteenth amendments enacted for the 
Negro were so drawn as to exclude women, the leaders 
of the movement were bitterly disappointed. Rut a prece- 
dent had been set in extending the franchise by federal 
amendment; the advocates of woman suffrage, who at 
first had attempted to change state constitutions, now 
saw the way to their goal. In 1869 they formed the 
National Woman Suffrage Association, dedicated to 
securing a sixteenth amendment for the enfranchisement 
of women. This organization (which in 1890 merged 
with Lucy Stone's American Woman Suffrage Associ- 
ation to form the National American Woman Suffrage 
Association") held a convention every year for fifty years, 
and subjected the Congress and the state legislatures to an 
incessant barrage of lobbying activity. 

Despite these persistent efforts, it was not until 1887 
that the woman suffrage amendment was first brought 
to a vote on the floor of the Senate of the United States. 
On January 25 of that year Senator Henry W. Blair of 
New Hampshire called attention to the delay in con- 



CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 315 

sidering this amendment which, as he said, "has been 
pending in this body and in Congress for twenty or 
twenty-five years without ever having reached a vote 
at all." On the motion of Senator Blair the Senate pro- 
ceeded to consider a joint resolution (S.R. 5) providing 
that: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote 
shall not he denied or abridged by the United States or 
by any state on account of sex" Speaking for the bill 
were Senators Joseph N. Dolph (Ore.), George Hoar 
(Mass.), and Blair; leading the opposition were Senators 
Joseph E. Brown (Ga.) and George G. Vest (Mo.). Sena- 
tor Brown began the debate with a speech which accord- 
ing to the authors of History of Woman Suffrage "em- 
bodied the stock objections to woman suffrage, practically 
all in fact which are ever made." 1 Incredible as some of 
these arguments seem today, examination of the speeches 
and writings of the period reveals that they are typical 
of those raised by both women and men— in many cases 
persons of great prominence and learning. 

Both Brown and Blair had been members of the 
seven-man Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage be- 
fore whom a group of women led by Susan B. Anthony 
had presented their case March y, 1884. This committee 
had submitted a favorable recommendation to the Senate, 
with Senators Brown and Cockrell dissenting. Browns 
speech to the Senate on January 25, i88y reiterated the 
points made in this dissenting report. At the completion 
of Brown's remarks, Senator Dolph spoke in favor of the 
amendment. He assured his colleagues that since women 
had been enfranchised in Washington Territory, the sun 
had continued to rise and set, the seasons had come and 
gone, marriages had been just as frequent and divorces no 
more so, and that women had not lost their influence for 
good, while men had been elevated and refined. 

1 Susan B. Anthony and Ida H. Harper, History of Woman 
Suffrage (Rochester, N.Y.: Susan B. Anthony, c. 1902), IV, 
P. 93. 



316 CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 

In his speech against the amendment Senator Vest of 
Missouri read into the Record a list of eminent men, 
including the President of Harvard and numerous clergy- 
men, who opposed woman suffrage. He quoted exten- 
sively from the anti-suffrage arguments of a Mrs. Clara 
T. Leonard and asked permission to print in full a pam- 
phlet, "The Law of Woman Life," by Adeline D. T. 
Whitney. Senator Blair then requested permission to 
have printed in the Record the arguments that Miss 
Anthony and her associates had originally presented 
on March y, 1884 before the Senate committee. 
"I think it only just" he said, "that woman, who 
is most interested, should be heard, at least under the 
circumstances when she has herself been heard on the 
other side through printed matter." 2 Senator Hoar closed 
the debate with a few brief remarks in which he referred 
pointedly to Senator Vest's address. He observed that 
Vest, a brilliant man, a lawyer and a logician, had fur- 
nished "the gush and the emotion and the eloquence," 
but had called on two women for the argument. He 
ventured the opinion that if women had to argue for Mr. 
Vest, it might be reasonable to give them seats in the 
Senate to make their own arguments. The Senate then 
voted on the amendment, defeating it 34 to 16. 

This was the first and only occasion in the nineteenth 
century on which the woman suffrage amendment was 
brought to a vote in the United States Senate. No further 
vote was taken in the Senate until 19 14 (with the vote 
3$ f or > 34 against), and none at all in the House until 
iQi 5. Meanwhile the fight for the vote continued un- 
abated. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton were succeeded 

2 Since authentic versions of Miss Anthony's speeches are so 
rare, this stenographic report of her remarks before a Congres- 
sional committee provides one of the few opportunities to near 
her "as she really was." "Miss Anthony never wrote her addresses 
and no stenographic reports were made. Brief and inadequate 
newspaper accounts are all that remain." Anthony and Harper, 
History of Woman Suffrage, IV, p. 28, footnote. 



CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 317 

in the twentieth century hy new leaders, notably Dr. 
Anna Howard Shaw and Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt. 
The issue was kept before the nation by annual hearings 
before committees of Congress, petitions, deputations to 
the President, resolutions from conventions, circulariza- 
tion of printed matter, and speeches by both men and 
women. 

Frustrated in their attempts to persuade Congress to 
amend the Constitution, suffrage leaders realized the need 
for political power. Political power was to be obtained by 
getting suffrage in the states and thereby making women 
voters influential in national politics. A deputation to 
President Roosevelt in 1908 was discouraged from mak- 
ing further petitions and was advised to "Go get another 
state." Their success in following this advice is seen in 
the fact that by 1919 women were entitled to vote for 
339 out of a total of 531 presidential electors. The im- 
pact of this political influence, together with a general 
recognition of women's contribution to the war effort, 
helped melt opposition. On ]une 4, 1919, Congress ap- 
proved the nineteenth amendment to the Constitution 
and submitted it to the states for ratification. On August 
26, 1920, Tennessee, the thirty-sixth state, having rati- 
fied, universal woman suffrage became the law of the 
land. The fight begun in 1848 in Seneca Falls, N.Y., had 
at last been won. 



For the Woman Suffrage Amendment 
SUSAN BROWNELL ANTHONY 



Born, Adams, Massachusetts, February 15, 1820; died, 
Rochester, New York, March 13, 1906. Reared by a 
Quaker father, she grew up in an atmosphere of inde- 
pendent thought and zeal for social reform. The family 
home near Rochester was a gathering place for such re- 
formers as Phillips, Garrison, Channing, and Frederick 
Douglass. After a limited formal education she became 
a teacher and in 1846 was made head of the Female 
Department of Canajoharie Academy. Her interest in 
social issues led her to leave teaching and to take an active 
part in the temperance and abolitionist movements. In 
1 85 1 she met Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the 
two women formed a partnership for the promotion of 
woman suffrage which was to continue for half a century. 
President of National Woman Suffrage Association, 
1892-1900. A militant leader, Susan Anthony was a pro- 
pulsive force in the movement to which she consecrated 
her life with singleness of purpose. 



M 



r. Chairman and Gentlemen: Mrs. Spencer said 
that I would make an argument. I do not propose 
to do so, because I take it for granted that the members of this committee 
understand that we have all the argument on our side, and such an argument 
would be simply a series of platitudes and maxims of government. The theory 

Select Committee on Woman Suffrage, United States Senate, March 7, 1884. 
Printed as part of the debate on the woman suffrage amendment, January 25, 1887. 
Congressional Record, 49th Cong., 2nd Sess., vol. 18, pt. I, pp. 998-1002. Approximately 
the first two-thirds of Miss Anthony's statement is reproduced here. 

318 



SUSAN BROWNELL ANTHONY 319 

of this Government from the beginning has been perfect equality to all the 
people. That is shown by every one of the fundamental principles, which I 
need not stop to repeat. Such being the theory, the application would be, of 
course, that all persons not having forfeited their right to representation in the 
Government should be possessed of it at the age of twenty-one. But instead 
of adopting a practice in conformity with the theory of our Government, we 
began first by saying that all men of property were the people of the nation 
upon whom the Constitution conferred equality of rights. The next step was 
that all white men were the people to whom should be practically applied the 
fundamental theories. There we halt to-day and stand at a deadlock, so far as 
the application of our theory may go. We women have been standing before 
the American republic for thirty years, asking the men to take yet one step 
further and extend the practical application of the theory of equality of rights 
to all the people to the other half of the people— the women. That is all that 
I stand here to-day to attempt to demand. 

Of course, I take it for granted that the committee are in sympathy at 
least with the reports of the Judiciary Committees presented both in the 
Senate and the House. I remember that after the adoption of the fourteenth 
and fifteenth amendments Senator Edmunds reported on the petition of the 
ten thousand foreign-born citizens of Rhode Island who were denied equality 
of rights in Rhode Island simply because of their foreign birth; and in that 
report held that the amendments were enacted and attached to the Consti- 
tution simply for men of color, and therefore that their provisions could not 
be so construed as to bring within their purview the men of foreign birth 
in Rhode Island. Then the House Committee on the Judiciary, with Judge 
Bingham, of Ohio, at its head, made a similar report upon our petitions, 
holding that because those amendments were made essentially with the black 
men in view, therefore their provisions could not be extended to the women 
citizens of this country or to any class except men citizens of color. 

I voted in the State of New York in 1872 under the construction of those 
amendments, which we felt to be the true one, that all persons born in the 
United States, or any State thereof, and under the jurisdiction of the United 
States, were citizens, and entitled to equality of rights, and that no State 
could deprive them of their equality of rights. I found three young men, 
inspectors of election, who were simple enough to read the Constitution 
and understand it in accordance with what was the letter and what should 
have been its spirit. Then, as you will remember, I was prosecuted by the 
officers of the Federal court, and the cause was carried through the different 
courts in the State of New York, in the northern district, and at last I was 
brought to trial at Canandaigua. 

When Mr. Justice Hunt was brought from the supreme bench to sit upon 
that trial, he wrested my case from the hands of the jury altogether, after 



320 CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 

having listened three days to testimony, and brought in a verdict himself 
of guilty, denying to my counsel even the poor privilege of having the jury 
polled. Through all that trial when I, as a citizen of the United States, as a 
citizen of the State of New York and city of Rochester, as a person who had 
done something at least that might have entitled her to a voice in speaking 
for herself and for her class, in all that trial I not only was denied my right 
to testify as to whether I voted or not, but there was not one single woman's 
voice to be heard nor to be considered, except as witnesses, save when it came 
to the judge asking, "Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall 
not be pronounced?" Neither as judge, nor as attorney, nor as jury was I 
allowed any person who could be legitimately called my peer to speak for me. 

Then, as you will remember, Mr. Justice Hunt not only pronounced the 
verdict of guilty, but a sentence of $100 fine and costs of prosecution. I said 
to him, "May it please your honor, I do not propose to pay it"; and I never 
have paid it, and I never shall. I asked your honorable bodies of Congress 
the next year— in 1874— to pass a resolution to remit that fine. Both Houses 
refused it; the committees reported against it; though through Benjamin F. 
Butler, in the House, and a member of your committee, and Matthew H. 
Carpenter, in the Senate, there were plenty of precedents brought forward 
to show that in cases of multitudes of men fines had been remitted. I state 
this merely to show the need of woman to speak for herself, to be as judge, 
to be as juror. 

Mr. Justice Hunt in his opinion stated that suffrage was a fundamental 
right, and therefore a right that belonged to the State. It seemed to me that 
was just as much of a retroversion of the theory of what is right in our Gov- 
ernment as there could possibly be. Then, after the decision in my case came 
that of Mrs. Minor, of Missouri. She prosecuted the officers there for denying 
her the right to vote. She carried her case up to your Supreme Court, and the 
Supreme Court answered her the same way; that the amendments were 
made for black men; that their provisions could not protect women; that the 
Constitution of the United States has no voters of its own. 

Mrs. spencer. And you remember Judge Cartter's decision in my case. 

Miss anthony. Mr. Cartter said that women are citizens and may be 
qualified, &c, but that it requires some sort of legislation to give them the 
right to vote. 

The Congress of the United States notwithstanding, and the Supreme 
Court of the United States notwithstanding, with all deference and respect, 
I differ with them all, and know that I am right and that they are wrong. 
The Constitution of the United States as it is protects me. If I could get a 
practical application of the Constitution it would protect me and all women 
in the enjoyment of perfect equality of rights everywhere under the shadow 
of the American flag. 



SUSAN BROWNELL ANTHONY 32 1 

I do not come to you to petition for special legislation, or for any more 
amendments to the Constitution, because I think they are unnecessary, but 
because you say there is not in the Constitution enough to protect me. There- 
fore I ask that you, true to your own theory and assertion, should go forward 
to make more constitution. 

Let me remind you that in the case of all other classes of citizens under 
the shadow of our flag you have been true to the theory that taxation and 
representation are inseparable. Indians not taxed are not counted in the basis 
of representation, and are not allowed to vote; but the minute that your 
Indians are counted in the basis of representation and are allowed to vote 
they are taxed; never before. In my State of New York, and in nearly all 
the States, the members of the State militia, hundreds and thousands of 
men, are exempted from taxation on property; in my State to the value of 
$800, and in most of the States to a value in that neighborhood. While such 
a member of the militia lives, receives his salary, and is able to earn money, 
he is exempted; but when he dies the assessor puts his widow's name down 
upon the assessor's list, and the tax-collector never fails to call upon the 
widow and make her pay the full tax upon her property. In most of the 
States clergymen are exempted. In my State of New York they are exempted 
on property to the value of $1,500. As long as the clergyman lives and receives 
his fat salary, or his lean one, as the case may be, he is exempted on that 
amount of property; but when the breath leaves the body of the clergyman, 
and the widow is left without any income, or without any means of support, 
the State comes in and taxes the widow. 

So it is with regard to all black men. In the State of New York up to the 
day of the passage of the fifteenth amendment, black men who were willing 
to remain without reporting themselves worth as much as $250, and thereby 
to remain without exercising the right to vote, never had their names put 
on the assessor's list; they were passed by, while, if the poorest colored 
woman owned 50 feet of real estate, a little cabin anywhere, that colored 
woman's name was always on the assessor's list, and she was compelled to 
pay her tax. While Frederick Douglass lived in my State he was never allowed 
to vote until he could show himself worth the requisite $250; and when he 
did vote in New York, he voted not because he was a man, not because he 
was a citizen of the United States, nor yet because he was a citizen of the 
State, but simply because he was worth the requisite amount of money. In 
Connecticut both black men and black women were exempted from taxation 
prior to the adoption of the fifteenth amendment. 

The law was amended in 1848, by which black men were thus exempted, 
and black women followed the same rule in that State. That, I believe, is 
the only State where black women were exempted from taxation under the 
law. When the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were attached to the 



322 CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 

Constitution they carried to the black man of Connecticut the boon of the 
ballot as well as the burden of taxation, whereas they carried to the black 
woman of Connecticut the burden of taxation, but no ballot by which to 
protect her property. I know a colored woman in New Haven, Conn., worth 
$50,000, and she never paid a penny of taxation until the ratification of the 
fifteenth amendment. From that day on she is compelled to pay a heavy tax 
on that amount of property. 

Mrs. spencer. Is it because she is a citizen? Please explain. 

Miss anthony. Because she is black. 

Mrs. spencer. Is it because the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments made 
women citizens? 

Miss anthony. Certainly; because it declared the black people citizens. 

Gentlemen, you have before you various propositions of amendment to 
the Federal Constitution. One is for the election of President by the vote of 
the people direct. Of course women are not people. 

Senator edmunds. Angels. 

Miss anthony. Yes; angels up in heaven or else devils down there. 

Senator edmunds. I have never known any of that kind. 

Miss anthony. I wish you, gentlemen, would look down there and see the 
myriads that are there. We want to help them and lift them up. That is ex- 
actly the trouble with you, gentlemen; you are forever looking at your own 
wives, your own mothers, your own sisters, and your own daughters, and 
they are well cared for and protected; but only look down to the struggling 
masses of women who have no one to protect them, neither husband, father, 
brother, son, with no mortal in all the land to protect them. If you would look 
down there the question would be solved; but the difficulty is that you think 
only of those who are doing well. We are not speaking for ourselves, but for 
those who can not speak for themselves. We are speaking for the doomed 
as much as you, Senator edmunds, used to speak for the doomed on 
the plantations of the South. 

Amendments have been proposed to put God in the Constitution and to 
keep God out of the Constitution. All sorts of propositions to amend the 
Constitution have been made; but I ask that you allow no other amendment 
to be called the sixteenth but that which shall put into the hands of one-half 
of the entire people of the nation the right to express their opinions as to 
how the Constitution shall be amended henceforth. Women have the right 
to say whether we shall have God in the Constitution as well as men. Women 
have a right to say whether we shall have a national law or an amendment 
to the Constitution prohibiting the importation or manufacture of alcoholic 
liquors. We have a right to have our opinions counted on every possible 
question concerning the public welfare. 

You ask us why we do not get this right to vote first in the school districts, 



SUSAN BROWNELL ANTHONY 323 

and on school questions, or the questions of liquor license. It has been shown 
very clearly why we need something more than that. You have good enough 
laws to-day in every State in this Union for the suppression of what are 
termed the social vices; for the suppression of the grog-shops, the gambling 
houses, the brothels, the obscene shows. There is plenty of legislation in every 
State in this Union for their suppression if it could be executed. Why is the 
Government, why are the States and the cities, unable to execute those laws? 
Simply because there is a large balance of power in every city that does not 
want those laws executed. Consequently both parties must alike cater to that 
balance of political power. The party that puts a plank in its platform that 
the laws against the grog-shops and all the other sinks of iniquity must be 
executed, is the party that will not get this balance of power to vote for it, 
and, consequently, the party that can not get into power. 

What we ask of you is that you will make of the women of the cities a 
balance of political power, so that when a mayor, a member of the common 
council, a supervisor, a justice of the peace, a district attorney, a judge on 
the bench even, shall go before the people of that city as a candidate for the 
suffrages of the people he shall not only be compelled to look to the men 
who frequent the grog-shops, the brothels, and the gambling houses, who 
will vote for him if he is not in favor of executing the law, but that he shall 
have to look to the mothers, the sisters, the wives, the daughters of those 
deluded men to see what they will do if he does not execute the law. 

We want to make of ourselves a balance of political power. What we need 
is the power to execute the laws. We have got laws enough. Let me give you 
one little fact in regard to my own city of Rochester. You all know how that 
wonderful whip called the temperance crusade roused the whisky ring. It 
caused the whisky force to concentrate itself more strongly at the ballot-box 
than ever before, so that when the report of the elections in the spring of 1 874 
went over the country the result was that the whisky ring was triumphant, 
and that the whisky ticket was elected more largely than ever before. Senator 
Thurman will remember how it was in his own State of Ohio. Everybody 
knows that if my friends, Mrs. ex-Governor Wallace, Mrs. Allen, and all the 
women of the great West could have gone to the ballot-box at those munic- 
ipal elections and voted for candidates, no such result would have occurred; 
while you refused by the laws of the State to the women the right to have 
their opinions counted, every rum-seller, every drunkard, every pauper even 
from the poor-house, and every criminal outside of the State's prison came 
out on election day to express his opinion and have it counted. 

The next result of that political event was that the ring demanded new 
legislation to protect the whisky traffic everywhere. In my city the women 
did not crusade the streets, but they said they would help the men to execute 
the law. They held meetings, sent out committees, and had testimony secured 



324 CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 

against every man who had violated the law, and when the board of excise 
held its meeting those women assembled, three or four hundred, in the church 
one morning, and marched in a solid body to the common council chamber 
where the board of excise was sitting. As one rum-seller after another brought 
in his petition for a renewal of license, who had violated the law, those 
women presented the testimony against him. The law of the State of New 
York is that no man shall have a renewal who has violated the law. But in 
not one case did that board refuse to grant a renewal of license because of the 
testimony which those women presented, and at the close of the sitting it 
was found that twelve hundred more licenses had been granted than ever 
before in the history of the State. Then the defeated women said they would 
have those men punished according to law. 

Again they retained an attorney and appointed committees to investigate 
all over the city. They got the proper officer to prosecute every rum-seller. I 
was at their meeting. One woman reported that the officer in every city re- 
fused to prosecute the liquor dealer who had violated the law. Why? 
Because if he should do so he would lose the votes of all the employes of 
certain shops on that street, if another he would lose the votes of the railroad 
employes, and if another he would lose the German vote, if another the Irish 
vote, and so on. I said to those women what I say to you, and what I know 
to be true to-day, that if the women of the city of Rochester had held the 
power of the ballot in their hands they would have been a great political 
balance of power. 

The last report was from District Attorney Raines. The women complained 
of a certain lager-beer-garden keeper. Said the district attorney, "Ladies, you 
are right, this man is violating the law, everybody knows it, but if I should 
prosecute him I would lose the entire German vote." Said I, "Ladies, do you 
not see that if the women of the city of Rochester had the right to vote 
District Attorney Raines would have been compelled to have stopped and 
counted, weighed and measured? He would have said, If I prosecute that 
lager-beer German I shall lose the 5,000 German votes of this city, but if I 
fail to prosecute him and execute the laws I shall lose the votes of 20,000 
women.' " 

Do you not see, gentlemen, that so long as you put this power of the 
ballot in the hands of every possible man, rich, poor, drunk, sober, educated, 
ignorant, outside of the State's prison, to make and unmake, not only every 
law and lawmaker, but every office-holder who has to do with the executing 
of the law, and take the power from the hands of the women of the nation, 
the mothers, you put the long arm of the lever, as we call it in mechanics, in 
the hands of the whisky power and make it utterly impossible for regulation 
of sobriety to be maintained in our community? The first step towards social 
regulation and good society in towns, cities, and villages is the ballot in the 



SUSAN BROWNELL ANTHONY 325 

hands of the mothers of those places. I appeal to you especially in this 
matter. 

I do not know what you think about the proper sphere of women. It matters 
little what any of us think about it. We shall each and every individual find 
our own proper sphere if we are left to act in freedom; but my opinion is 
that when the whole arena of politics and government is thrown open to 
women they will endeavor to do very much as they do in their homes; that 
the men will look after the greenback theory or the hard-money theory, that 
you will look after free-trade or tariff, and the women will do the home house- 
keeping of the government, which is to take care of the moral government 
and the social regulation of our home department. 

It seems to me that we have the power of government outside to shape 
and control circumstances, but that the inside power, the government house- 
keeping, is powerless, and is compelled to accept whatever conditions or 
circumstances shall be granted. 

Therefore I do not ask for liquor suffrage alone, nor for school suffrage 
alone, because that would amount to nothing. We must be able to have a 
voice in the election not only of every law-maker, but of every one who has 
to do either with the making or the executing of the laws. 

Then you ask why we do not get suffrage by the popular-vote method, 
State by State? I answer, because there is no reason why I, for instance, should 
desire the women of one State of this nation to vote any more than the 
women of another State. I have no more interest as regards the women of 
New York than I have as regards the women of Indiana, Iowa, or any of 
the States represented by the women who have come up here. The reason 
why I do not wish to get this right by what you call the popular-vote method, 
the State vote, is because I believe there is a United States citizenship. I 
believe that this is a nation, and to be a citizen of this nation should be a 
guaranty to every citizen of the right to a voice in the Government, and 
should give to me my right to express my opinion. You deny to me my liberty, 
my freedom, if you say that I shall have no voice whatever in making, shap- 
ing, or controlling the conditions of society in which I live. I differ from 
Judge Hunt, and I hope I am respectful when I say that I think he made a 
very funny mistake when he said that fundamental rights belong to the 
States and only surface rights to the National Government. I hope you will 
agree with me that the fundamental right of citizenship, the right to voice 
in the Government, is a national right. 

The National Government may concede to the States the right to decide 
by a majority as to what banks they shall have, what laws they shall enact 
with regard to insurance, with regard to property, and any other question; 
but I insist upon it that the National Government should not leave it a 
question with the States that a majority in any State may disfranchise the 



326 CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 

minority under any circumstances whatsoever. The franchise to you men is 
not secure. You hold it to-day, to be sure, by the common consent of white 
men, but if at any time, on your principle of government, the majority of 
any of the States should choose to amend the State constitution so as to dis- 
franchise this or that portion of the white men by making this or that con- 
dition, by all the decisions of the Supreme Court and by the legislation thus 
far there is nothing to hinder them. 

Therefore the women demand a sixteenth amendment to bring to women 
the right to vote, or if you please to confer upon women their right to vote, 
to protect them in it, and to secure men in their right, because you are not 
secure. 

I would let the States act upon almost every other question by majorities, 
except the power to say whether my opinion shall be counted. I insist upon 
it that no State shall decide that question. 

Then the popular-vote method is an impracticable thing. We tried to get 
negro suffrage by the popular vote, as you will remember. Senator Thurman 
will remember that in Ohio the Republicans submitted the question in 1867, 
and with all the prestige of the national Republican party and of the State 
party, when every influence that could be brought by the power and the 
patronage of the party in power was brought to bear, yet negro suffrage ran 
behind the regular Republican ticket 40,000. 

It was tried in Kansas, it was tried in New York, and everywhere that it 
was submitted the question was voted down overwhelmingly. Just so we 
tried to get women suffrage by the popular-vote method in Kansas in 1867, 
in Michigan in 1874, in Colorado in 1877, and in each case the result was 
precisely the same, the ratio of the vote standing one-third for women suffrage 
and two-thirds against women suffrage. If we were to canvass State after 
State we should get no better vote than that. Why? Because the question of 
the enfranchisement of women is a question of government, a question of 
philosophy, of understanding, of great fundamental principle, and the masses 
of the hard-working people of this nation, men and women, do not think 
upon principles. They can only think on the one eternal struggle where- 
withal to be fed, to be clothed, and to be sheltered. Therefore I ask you not 
to compel us to have this question settled by what you term the popular-vote 
method. 

Let me illustrate by Colorado, the most recent State, in the election of 
1877. I am happy to say to you that I have canvassed three States for this 
question. If Senator Chandler were alive, or if Senator Ferry were in this 
room, they would remember that I followed in their train in Michigan, with 
larger audiences than either of those Senators throughout the whole canvass. 
I want to say, too, that although those Senators may have believed in woman 
suffrage, they did not say much about it. They did not help us much. The 



SUSAN BROWNELL ANTHONY 327 

Greenback movement was quite popular in Michigan at that time. The 
Republicans and Greenbackers made a most humble bow to the grangers, 
but woman suffrage did not get much help. In Colorado, at the close of the 
canvass, 6,666 men voted "Yes." Now I am going to describe the men who 
voted "Yes." They were native-born white men, temperance men, cultivated, 
broad, generous, just men, men who think. On the other hand, 16,007 voted 

"No." 

Now I am going to describe that class of voters. In the southern part of 
that State there are Mexicans, who speak the Spanish language. They put 
their wheat in circles on the ground with the heads out, and drive a mule 
around to thrash it. The vast population of Colorado is made up of that class 
of people. I was sent out to speak in a voting precinct having 200 voters; 
150 of those voters were Mexican greasers, 40 of them foreign-born citizens, 
and just 10 of them were born in this country; and I was supposed to be 
competent to convert those men to let me have as much right in this Govern- 
ment as they had, when, unfortunately, the great majority of them could not 
understand a word that I said. Fifty or sixty Mexican greasers stood against 
the wall with their hats down over their faces. The Germans put seats in a 
lager-beer saloon, and would not attend unless I made a speech there; so I 
had a small audience. 

Mrs. Archibald. There is one circumstance that I should like to relate. In 
the county of Las Animas, a county where there is a large population of 
Mexicans, and where they always have a large majority over the native popu- 
lation, they do not know our language at all. Consequently a number of 
tickets must be printed for those people in Spanish. The gentleman in our 
little town of Trinidad who had the charge of the printing of those tickets, 
being adverse to us, had every ticket printed against woman suffrage. The 
samples that were sent to us from Denver were "for" or "against," but the 
tickets that were printed only had the word "against" on them, so that our 
friends had to scratch their tickets, and all those Mexican people who could 
not understand this trick and did not know the facts of the case, voted against 
woman suffrage; so that we lost a great many votes. This was man's generosity. 

Miss Anthony. Special legislation for the benefit of woman! I will admit 
you that on the floor of the constitutional convention was a representative 
Mexican, intelligent, cultivated, chairman of the committee on suffrage, who 
signed the petition, and was the first to speak in favor of woman suffrage. 
Then they have in Denver about four hundred negroes. Governor Routt said 
to me, "The four hundred Denver negroes are going to vote solid for woman 
suffrage." I said, "I do not know much about the Denver negroes, but I 
know certainly what all negroes were educated in, and slavery never edu- 
cated master or negro into a comprehension of the great principles of human 
freedom of our nation; it is not possible, and I do not believe they are going 



328 CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 

to vote for us." Just ten of those Denver negroes voted for woman suffrage. 
Then, in all the mines of Colorado the vast majority of the wage laborers, 
as you know, are foreigners. 

There may be intelligent foreigners in this country, and I know there are, 
who are in favor of the enfranchisement of woman, but that one does not 
happen to be Carl Schurz, I am ashamed to say. And I want to say to you of 
Carl Schurz, that side by side with that man on the battlefield of Germany 
was Madame Anneke, as noble a woman as ever trod the American soil. She 
rode by the side of her husband, who was an officer, on the battlefield; she 
slept in battlefield tents, and she fled from Germany to this country, for her 
life and property, side by side with Carl Schurz. Now, what is it for Carl 
Schurz, stepping up to the very door of the Presidency and looking back to 
Madame Anneke, who fought for liberty as well as he, to say, "You be subject 
in this Republic; I will be sovereign." If it is an insult for Carl Schurz to 
say that to a foreign-born woman, what is it for him to say it to Mrs. ex- 
Governor Wallace, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott— to the native- 
born, educated, tax-paying women of this Republic? I can forgive an ignorant 
foreigner; I can forgive an ignorant negro; but I can not forgive Carl Schurz. 

Right in the file of the foreigners opposed to woman suffrage, educated 
under monarchical governments that do not comprehend our principles, 
whom I have seen traveling through the prairies of Iowa or the prairies of 
Minnesota, are the Bohemians, Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Irishmen, 
Mennonites; I have seen them riding on those magnificent loads of wheat 
with those magnificent Saxon horses, shining like glass on a sunny morning, 
every one of them going to vote "no" against woman suffrage. You can not 
convert them; it is impossible. Now and then there is a whisky manufacturer, 
drunkard, inebriate, libertine, and what we call a fast man, and a colored 
man, broad and generous enough to be willing to let women vote, to let his 
mother have her opinion counted as to whether there shall be license or no 
license, but the rank and file of all classes who wish to enjoy full license in 
what are termed the petty vices of men are pitted solid against the enfran- 
chisement of women. 

Then, in addition to all these, there are, as you know, a few religious 
bigots left in the world who really believe that somehow or other if women 
are allowed to vote St. Paul would feel badly about it. I do not know but 
that some of the gentlemen present belong to that class. So, when you put 
those best men of the nation, having religion about everything except on 
this one question, whose prejudices control them, with all this vast mass of 
ignorant, uneducated, degraded population in this country, you make an 
overwhelming and insurmountable majority against the enfranchisement of 
women. 

It is because of this fact that I ask you not to remand us back to the States, 



SUSAN BROWNELL ANTHONY 329 

but to submit to the States the proposition of a sixteenth amendment. The 
popular-vote method is not only of itself an impossibility, but it is too humili- 
ating a process to compel the women of this nation to submit to any 
longer. 

I am going to give you an illustration, not because I have any disrespect 
for the person, because on many other questions he was really a good deal 
better than a good many other men who had not so bad a name in this nation. 
When, under the old regime, John Morrissey, of my State, the king of 
gamblers, was a Representative on the floor of Congress, it was humiliating 
enough for Lucretia Mott, for Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for all of us to come 
down here to Washington and beg at the feet of John Morrissey that he 
would let intelligent, native-born women vote, and let us have as much right 
in this Government and in the government of the city of New York as he had. 
When John Morrissey was a member of the New York State Legislature it 
would have been humiliating enough for us to go to the New York State 
Legislature and pray of John Morrissey to vote to ratify the sixteenth amend- 
ment, giving to us a right to vote; but if instead of a sixteenth amendment you 
tell us to go back to the popular-vote method, the old-time method, and go 
down into John Morrissey's seventh Congressional district in the city of New 
York, and there, in the sloughs and slums of that great Sodom, in the grog- 
shops, the gambling-houses, and the brothels, beg at the feet of each individ- 
ual fisticuff of his constituency to give the noble, educated, native-born, tax- 
paying women of the State of New York as much right as he has, that would 
be too bitter a pill for a native-born woman to swallow any longer. 

I beg you, gentlemen, to save us from the mortification and the humiliation 
of appealing to the rabble. We already have on our side the vast majority of 
the better educated— the best classes of men. You will remember that Senator 
Christiancy, of Michigan, two years ago, said on the floor of the Senate that 
of the 40,000 men who voted for woman suffrage in Michigan it was said 
that there was not a drunkard, not a libertine, not a gambler, not a depraved, 
low man among them. Is not that something that tells for us, and for our 
right*? It is the fact, in every State of the Union, that we have the intelligent 
lawyers and the most liberal ministers of all the sects, not excepting the 
Roman Catholics. A Roman Catholic priest preached a sermon the other day, 
in which he said, "God grant that there were a thousand Susan B. Anthonys 
in this city to vote and work for temperance." When a Catholic priest says 
that there is a great moral necessity pressing down upon this nation demand- 
ing the enfranchisement of women, I ask you that you shall not drive us back 
to beg our rights at the feet of the most ignorant and depraved men of the 
nation, but that you, the representative men of the nation, will hold the 
question in the hollow of your hands. We ask you to lift this question out 
of the hands of the rabble. 



33° CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 

You who are here upon the floor of Congress in both Houses are the picked 
men of the nation. You may say what you please about John Morrissey, the 
gambler, &c.: he was head and shoulders above the rank and file of his 
constituency. The world may gabble ever so much about members of Congress 
being corrupt and being bought and sold; they are as a rule head and shoul- 
ders above the great majority who compose their State governments. There 
is no doubt about it. Therefore I ask of you, as representative men, as men 
who think, as men who study, as men who philosophize, as men who know, 
that you will not drive us back to the States any more, but that you will carry 
out this method of procedure which has been practiced from the beginning 
of the Government; that is, that you will put a prohibitory amendment in the 
Constitution and submit the proposition to the several State legislatures. The 
amendment which has been presented before you reads: 

ARTICLE XVI. 

section i . The right of suffrage in the United States shall be based on 
citizenship, and the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be 
denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of sex, 
or for any reason not equally applicable to all citizens of the United States. 

section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate 
legislation. 

In this way we would get the right of suffrage just as much by what you 
call the consent of the States, or the States' rights method, as by any other 
method. The only point is that it is a decision by the representative men of 
the States instead of by the rank and file of the ignorant men of the States. 
If you would submit this proposition for a sixteenth amendment, by a two- 
thirds vote of the two Houses to the several legislatures, and the several 
legislatures ratify it, that would be just as much by the consent of the States 
as if Tom, Dick, and Harry voted "yes" or "no." Is it not, Senator? I want to 
talk to Democrats as well as Republicans, to show that it is a States' rights 
method. 

Senator Edmunds. Does anybody propose any other, in case it is done at 
all by the nation? 

Miss Anthony. Not by the nation, but they are continually driving us back 
to get it from the States, State by State. That is the point I want to make. 
We do not want you to drive us back to the States. We want you men to 
take the question out of the hands of the rabble of the State. 

The chairman. May I interrupt you? 

Miss anthony. Yes, sir; I wish you would. 

The chairman. You have reflected on this subject a great deal. You think 
there is a majority, as I understand, even in the State of New York, against 
women suffrage? 



SUSAN BROWNELL ANTHONY 331 

Miss Anthony. Yes, sir; overwhelmingly. 

The chairman. How, then, would you get Legislatures elected to ratify 
such a constitutional amendment? 

Miss Anthony. That brings me exactly to the point. 

The chairman. That is the point I wish to hear you upon. 

Miss anthony. Because the members of the State Legislatures are intelli- 
gent men and can vote and enact laws embodying great principles of the 
government without in anywise endangering their positions with their 
constituencies. A constituency composed of ignorant men would vote solid 
against us because they have never thought on the question. Every man or 
woman who believes in the enfranchisement of women is educated out of 
every idea that he or she was born into. We were all born into the idea that 
the proper sphere of women is subjection, and it takes education and thought 
and culture to lift us out of it. Therefore when men go to the ballot-box they 
all vote "no," unless they have actual argument on it. I will illustrate. We 
have six Legislatures in the nation, for instance, that have extended the right 
to vote on school questions to the women, and not a single member of the 
State Legislature has ever lost his office or forfeited the respect or confidence 
of his constituents as a representative because he voted to give women the 
right to vote on school questions. It is a question that the unthinking masses 
never have thought upon. They do not care about it one way or the other, 
only they have an instinctive feeling that because women never did vote 
therefore it is wrong that they ever should vote. 

Mrs. spencer. Do make the point that the Congress of the United States 
leads the Legislatures of the States and educates them. 

Miss anthony. When you, representative men, carry this matter to Legis- 
latures, State by State, they will ratify it. My point is that you can safely 
do this. Senator Thurman, of Ohio, would not lose a single vote in Ohio in 
voting in favor of the enfranchisement of women. Senator Edmunds would 
not lose a single Republican vote in the State of Vermont if he puts himself 
on our side, which, I think, he will do. It is not a political question. We are 
no political power that can make or break either party to-day. Consequently 
each man is left independent to express his own moral and intellectual con- 
victions on the matter without endangering himself politically. 

Senator Edmunds. I think, Miss Anthony, you ought to put it on rather 
higher, I will not say stronger, ground. If you can convince us that it is right 
we would not stop to see how it affected us politically. 

Miss anthony. I was coming to that. I was going to say to all of you men 
in office here to-day that if you can not go forward and carry out either your 
Democratic or your Republican or your Greenback theories, for instance, on 
the finance, there is no great political power that is going to take you away 
from these halls and prevent you from doing all those other things which you 



332 CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 

want to do, and you can act out your own moral and intellectual convictions 
on this without let or hindrance. 

Senator edmunds. Without any danger to the public interests, you mean. 

Miss anthony. Without any danger to the public interests. I did not mean 
to make a bad insinuation, Senator. 

I want to give you another reason why we appeal to you. In these three 
States where the question has been submitted and voted down we can not get 
another Legislature to resubmit it, because they say the people have expressed 
their opinion and decided no, and therefore nobody with any political sense 
would resubmit the question. It is therefore impossible in any one of those 
States. We have tried hard in Kansas for ten years to get the question resub- 
mitted; the vote of that State seems to be taken as a finality. We ask you to 
lift the sixteenth amendment out of the arena of the public mass into the 
arena of thinking legislative brains, the brains of the nation, under the law 
and the Constitution. Not only do we ask it for that purpose, but when you 
will have by a two-thirds vote submitted the proposition to the several Legis- 
latures, you have put the pin down and it never can go back. No subsequent 
Congress can revoke that submission of the proposition; there will be so 
much gained; it can not slide back. Then we will go to New York or to 
Pennsylvania, and urge upon the Legislatures the ratification of that amend- 
ment. They may refuse; they may vote it down the first time. Then we will 
go to the next Legislature, and the next Legislature, and plead and plead, 
from year to year, if it takes ten years. It is an open question to every Legis- 
lature until we can get one that will ratify it, and when that Legislature has 
once voted and ratified it no subsequent legislation can revoke their ratifica- 
tion. 

Thus, you perceive, Senators, that every step we would gain by this six- 
teenth amendment process is fast and not to be done over again. That is why 
I appeal to you especially. As I have shown you in the respective States, if 
we fail to educate the people of a whole State— and in Michigan it was only 
six months, and in Colorado less than six months— the State Legislatures say 
that is the end of it. I appeal to you, therefore, to adopt the course that we 
suggest. . . . 



Against the Woman Suffrage Amendment 



JOSEPH EMERSON BROWN 



Born, Pickens County, South Carolina, April 15, 1821; 
died, Atlanta, Georgia, November 30, 1894. Attended 
Calhoun Academy in South Carolina; studied law, was 
admitted to Georgia har, 1845; later was graduated from 
Yale Law School. Member of Georgia State Senate, 1849; 
judge of Superior Court of the Blue Ridge circuit, 1855. 
Governor of Georgia throughout Civil War: first elected 
1855; reelected 1859, 1861, 1863. Appointed chief justice 
of Supreme Court of Georgia, 1868; resigned r 1870 to he- 
come president of Western and Atlantic Railroad Com- 
pany. An ardent states' rights, proslavery man, Brown 
favored secession. After the war, however, he advocated 
compliance with the will of Congress, and joined with the 
Republicans in helping put through reconstruction meas- 
ures. For this action he was denounced as a traitor to his 
state and to the South. In 1871 he returned to the Demo- 
cratic party. Appointed in 1880 to fill a vacancy in the 
United States Senate, he was elected as a Democrat in 
1885 and served in the Senate until 1891. 



M 



r. President: The joint resolution introduced by 
my friend, the Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. 
Blair], proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, 
conferring the right to vote upon the women of the United States, is one 
of paramount importance, as it involves great questions far reaching in their 
tendency, which seriously affect the very pillars of our social fabric, which 

United States Senate, January 25, 1887. Congressional Record, 49th Cong., 2nd 
Sess., vol. 18, pt. I, pp. 980-983. 

333 



334 CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 

involve the peace and harmony of society, the unity of the family, and much 
of the future success of our Government. The question should therefore be 
met fairly and discussed with firmness, but with moderation and forbear- 
ance. . . . 

I believe that the Creator intended that the sphere of the males and females 
of our race should be different, and that their duties and obligations, while 
they differ materially, are equally important and equally honorable, and that 
each sex is equally well qualified by natural endowments for the discharge 
of the important duties which pertain to each, and that each sex is equally 
competent to discharge those duties. 

We find an abundance of evidence, both in the works of nature and in the 
Divine revelation, to establish the fact that the family properly regulated is 
the foundation and pillar of society, and is the most important of any other 
human institution. 

In the Divine economy it is provided that the man shall be the head of 
the family, and shall take upon himself the solemn obligation of providing 
for and protecting the family. 

Man, by reason of his physical strength, and his other endowments and 
faculties, is qualified for the discharge of those duties that require strength 
and ability to combat with the sterner realities and difficulties of life. The 
different classes of outdoor labor which require physical strength and endur- 
ance are by nature assigned to man, the head of the family, as part of his 
task. He discharges such labors as require greater physical endurance and 
strength than the female sex are usually found to possess. 

It is not only his duty to provide for and protect the family, but as a 
member of the community it is also his duty to discharge the laborious and 
responsible obligations which the family owe to the State, and which obliga- 
tions must be discharged by the head of the family, until the male members 
of the family have grown up to manhood and are able to aid in the discharge 
of those obligations, when it becomes their duty each in his turn to take 
charge of and rear a family, for which he is responsible. 

Among other duties which the head of the family owes to the State, is 
military duty in time of war, which he, when able-bodied, is able to discharge, 
and which the female members of the family are unable to discharge. 

He is also under obligation to discharge jury duty, and by himself or his 
representatives to perform his part of the labor necessary to construct and 
keep in order roads, bridges, streets, and all grades of public highways. And 
in this progressive age upon the male sex is devolved the duty of constructing 
and operating our railroads, and the engines and other rolling stock with 
which they are operated; of building, equipping, and launching, shipping 
and other water craft of every character necessary for the transportation of 
passengers and freight upon our rivers, our lakes, and upon the high seas. 



JOSEPH EMERSON BROWN 335 

The labor in our fields, sowing, cultivating, and reaping crops must be dis- 
charged mainly by the male sex, as the female sex, for want of physical 
strength, are generally unable to discharge these duties. As it is the duty of 
the male sex to perform the obligations to the State, to society, and to the 
family, already mentioned, with numerous others that might be enumerated, 
it is also their duty to aid in the government of the State, which is simply 
a great aggregation of families. Society can not be preserved nor can the 
people be prosperous without good government. The government of our 
country is a government of the people, and it becomes necessary that the 
class of people upon whom the responsibility rests should assemble together 
and consider and discuss the great questions of governmental policy which 
from time to time are presented for their decision. 

This often requires the assembling of caucuses in the night time, as well 
as public assemblages in the daytime. It is a laborious task, for which the 
male sex is infinitely better fitted than the female sex; and after proper 
consideration and discussion of the measures that may divide the country 
from time to time, the duty devolves upon those who are responsible for the 
government, at times and places to be fixed by law, to meet and by ballot to 
decide the great questions of government upon which the prosperity of the 
country depends. 

These are some of the active and sterner duties of life to which the male 
sex is by nature better fitted than the female sex. If in carrying out the policy 
of the State on great measures adjudged vital such policy should lead to war, 
either foreign or domestic, it would seem to follow very naturally that those 
who have been responsible for the management of the State should be the 
parties to take the hazards and hardships of the struggle. 

Here, again, man is better fitted by nature for the discharge of the duty- 
woman is unfit for it. So much for some of the duties imposed upon the male 
sex, for the discharge of which the Creator has endowed them with proper 
strength and faculties. 

On the other hand, the Creator has assigned to woman very laborious and 
responsible duties, by no means less important than those imposed upon the 
male sex, though entirely different in their character. In the family she is a 
queen. She alone is fitted for the discharge of the sacred trust of wife and 
the endearing relation of mother. 

While the man is contending with the sterner duties of life, the whole 
time of the noble, affectionate, and true woman is required in the discharge 
of the delicate and difficult duties assigned her in the family circle, in her 
church relations, and in the society where her lot is cast. When the husband 
returns home weary and worn in the discharge of the difficult and laborious 
task assigned him, he finds in the good wife solace and consolation, which 
is nowhere else afforded. If he is despondent and distressed, she cheers his 



336 CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 

heart with words of kindness; if he is sick or languishing, she soothes, com- 
forts, and ministers to him as no one but an affectionate wife can do. If his 
burdens are onerous, she divides their weight by the exercise of her love and 
her sympathy. 

But a still more important duty devolves upon the mother. After having 
brought into existence the offspring of the nuptial union, the children are 
dependent upon the mother as they are not upon any other human being. 
The trust is a most sacred, most responsible, and most important one. To 
watch over them in their infancy, and as the mind begins to expand to train, 
direct, and educate it in the paths of virtue and usefulness is the high 
trust assigned to the mother. She trains the twig as the tree should be in- 
clined. 

She molds the character. She educates the heart as well as the intellect, 
and she prepares the future man, now the boy, for honor or dishonor. Upon 
the manner in which she discharges her duty depends the fact whether he 
shall in future be a useful citizen or a burden to society. She inculcates 
lessons of patriotism, manliness, religion, and virtue, fitting the man by rea- 
son of his training to be an ornament to society, or dooming him by her 
neglect to a life of dishonor and shame. Society acts unwisely when it im- 
poses upon her the duties that by common consent have always been assigned 
to the stronger and sterner sex, and the discharge of which causes her to 
neglect those sacred and all important duties to her children and to the 
society of which they are members. 

In the church, by her piety, her charity, and her Christian purity, she 
not only aids society by a proper training of her own children, but the chil- 
dren of others, whom she encourages to come to the sacred altar, are taught 
to walk in the paths of rectitude, honor, and religion. In the Sunday-school 
room the good woman is a princess, and she exerts an influence which purifies 
and ennobles society, training the young in the truths of religion, making 
the Sunday-school the nursery of the church, and elevating society to the 
higher planes of pure religion, virtue, and patriotism. In the sick room and 
among the humble, the poor, and the suffering, the good woman, like an 
angel of light, cheers the hearts and revives the hopes of the poor, the suffer- 
ing, and the despondent. 

It would be a vain attempt to undertake to enumerate the refining, en- 
dearing, and ennobling influences exercised by the true woman in her rela- 
tions to the family and to society when she occupies the sphere assigned to 
her by the laws of nature and the Divine inspiration, which are our surest 
guide for the present and the future life. But how can woman be expected to 
meet these heavy responsibilities, and to discharge these delicate and most 
important duties of wife, Christian, teacher, minister of mercy, friend of the 
suffering, and consoler of the despondent and needy, if we impose upon her 



JOSEPH EMERSON BROWN 337 

the grosser, rougher, and harsher duties which nature has assigned to the 
male sex? 

If the wife and the mother is required to leave the sacred precincts of 
home, and to attempt to do military duty when the state is in peril; or if she 
is to be required to leave her home from day to day in attendance upon the 
court as a juror, and to be shut up in the jury room from night to night 
with men who are strangers while a question of life or property is being 
discussed; if she is to attend political meetings, take part in political discus- 
sions, and mingle with the male sex at political gatherings; if she is to 
become an active politician; if she is to attend political caucuses at late 
hours of the night; if she is to take part in all the unsavory work that may be 
deemed necessary for the triumph of her party; and if on election day she 
is to leave her home and go upon the streets electioneering for votes for the 
candidates who receive her support, and mingling among the crowds of men 
who gather round the polls, she is to press her way through them to the 
precinct and deposit her ballot; if she is to take part in the corporate struggles 
of the city or town in which she resides, attend to the duties of his honor, 
the mayor, the councilman, or of policeman, to say nothing of the many other 
like obligations, which are disagreeable even to the male sex, how is she, with 
all these heavy duties of citizen, politician, and officeholder resting upon her 
shoulders, to attend to the more sacred, delicate, and refining trust to which 
we have already referred, and for which she is peculiarly fitted by nature? If 
she is to discharge the duties last mentioned, how is she, in connection with 
them, to discharge the more refining, elevating, and ennobling duties of wife, 
mother, Christian, and friend, which are found in the sphere where nature 
has placed her? Who is to care for and train the children while she is absent 
in the discharge of these masculine duties? 

If it were proper to reverse the order of nature and assign woman to the 
sterner duties devolved upon the male sex, and to attempt to assign man to 
the more refining, delicate, and ennobling duties of the woman, man would 
be found entirely incompetent to the discharge of the obligations which 
nature has devolved upon the gentler sex, and society must be greatly in- 
jured by the attempted change. But if we are told that the object of this 
movement is not to reverse this order of nature, but only to devolve upon 
the gentler sex a portion of the more rigorous duties imposed by nature upon 
the stronger sex, we reply that society must be injured, as the woman would 
not be able to discharge those duties so well, by reason of her want of physical 
strength, as the male, upon whom they are devolved, and to the extent that 
the duties are to be divided, the male would be infinitely less competent to 
discharge the delicate and sacred trusts which nature has assigned to the 
female. 

But it has been said that the present law is unjust to woman; that she is 



338 CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 

often required to pay tax on the property she holds without being permitted 
to take part in framing or administering the laws by which her property is 
governed, and that she is taxed without representation. That is a great mis- 
take. 

It may be very doubtful whether the male or female sex in the present state 
of things has more influence in the administration of the affairs of the 
Government and the enactment of the laws by which we are governed. 

While the woman does not discharge military duty, nor does she attend 
courts and serve on juries, nor does she labor on the public streets, bridges, 
or highways, nor does she engage actively and publicly in the discussion of 
political affairs, nor does she enter the crowded precincts of the ballot-box 
to deposit her suffrage, still the intelligent, cultivated, noble woman is a 
power behind the throne. All her influence is in favor of morality, justice, 
and fair dealing, all her efforts and her counsel are in favor of good govern- 
ment, wise and wholesome regulations, and a faithful administration of the 
laws. Such a woman, by her gentleness, kindness, and Christian bearing, 
impresses her views and her counsels upon her father, her husband, her 
brothers, her sons, and her other male friends who imperceptibly yield to her 
influence many times without even being conscious of it. She rules not with 
a rod of iron, but with the queenly scepter; she binds not with hooks of steel 
but with silken cords; she governs not by physical efforts, but by moral 
suasion and feminine purity and delicacy. Her dominion is one of love, not of 
arbitrary power. 

We are satisfied, therefore, that the pure, cultivated, and pious ladies of 
this country now exercise a very powerful, but quiet, imperceptible influence 
in popular affairs, much greater than they can ever again exercise if female 
suffrage should be enacted and they should be compelled actively to take part 
in the affairs of state and the corruptions of party politics. 

It would be a gratification, and we are always glad to see the ladies gratified, 
to many who have espoused the cause of woman suffrage if they could take 
active part in political affairs, and go to the polls and cast their votes along- 
side the male sex; but while this would be a gratification to a large number 
of very worthy and excellent ladies who take a different view of the question 
from that which we entertain, we feel that it would be a great cruelty to a 
much larger number of the cultivated, refined, delicate, and lovely women of 
this country who seek no such distinction, who would enjoy no such privilege, 
who would with woman-like delicacy shrink from the discharge of any such 
obligation, and who would sincerely regret that, what they consider the folly 
of the state, had imposed upon them any such unpleasant duties. 

But should female suffrage be once established it would become an impera- 
tive necessity that the very large class, indeed much the largest class, of the 
women of this country of the character last described should yield, contrary 
to their inclinations and wishes, to the necessity which would compel them 



JOSEPH EMERSON BROWN 339 

to engage in political strife. We apprehend no one who has properly con- 
sidered this question will doubt if female suffrage should be established 
that the more ignorant and less refined portions of the female population of 
this country, to say nothing of the baser class of females, laying aside feminine 
delicacy and disregarding the sacred duties devolving upon them, to which 
we have already referred, would rush to the polls and take pleasure in the 
crowded association which the situation would compel, of the two sexes in 
political meetings, and at the ballot-box. 

[Senator Brown then speaks of the impropriety of adding an immense number 
of uneducated Negro women to the voting population.] 



It has been frequently urged with great earnestness by those who advocate 
woman suffrage that the ballot is necessary to the women to enable them to 
protect themselves in securing occupations, and to enable them to realize the 
same compensation for the like labor which is received by men. This argu- 
ment is plausible, but upon a closer examination it will be found to possess 
but little real force. The price of labor is and must continue to be governed 
by the law of supply and demand, and the person who has the most physical 
strength to labor, and the most pursuits requiring such strength open for 
employment, will always command the higher prices. 

Ladies make excellent teachers in public schools; many of them are every 
way the equals of their male competitors, and still they secure less wages 
than males. The reason is obvious. The number of ladies who offer themselves 
as teachers is much larger than the number of males who are willing to teach. 
The larger number of females offer to teach because other occupations are 
not open to them. The smaller number of males offer to teach because other 
more profitable occupations are open to most males who are competent to 
teach. The result is that the competition for positions of teachers to be filled 
by ladies is so great as to reduce the price; but as males can not be employed 
at that price, and are necessary in certain places in the schools, those seeking 
their services have to pay a higher rate for them. 

Persons having a larger number of places open to them with fewer com- 
petitors command higher wages than those who have a smaller number of 
places open to them with more competitors. This is the law of society. It is 
the law of supply and demand, which can not be changed by legislation. 
Then it follows that the ballot can not enable those who have to compete 
with the larger number to command the same prices as those who compete 
with the smaller number in the labor market. As the Legislature has no 
power to regulate in practice that of which the advocates of woman suffrage 
complain, the ballot in the hands of females could not aid its regulation. 

The ballot can not impart to the female physical strength which she does 
not possess, nor can it open to her pursuits which she does have the physical 



340 CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 

ability to engage in; and as long as she lacks the physical strength to compete 
with men in the different departments of labor, there will be more competi- 
tion in her department, and she must necessarily receive less wages. 

But it is claimed again, that females should have the ballot as a protection 
against the tyranny of bad husbands. This is also delusive. If the husband 
is brutal, arbitrary, or tyrannical, and tyrannizes over her at home, the ballot 
in her hands would be no protection against such injustice, but the husband 
who compelled her to conform to his wishes in other respects would also 
compel her to use the ballot, if she possessed it, as he might please to dictate. 
The ballot would therefore be of no assistance to the wife in such case, nor 
could it heal family strifes or dissensions. On the contrary, one of the 
gravest objections to placing the ballot in the hands of the female sex is that 
it would promote unhappiness and dissensions in the family circle. There 
should be unity and harmony in the family. 

At present the man represents the family in meeting the demands of the 
law and of society upon the family. So far as the rougher, coarser duties are 
concerned, the man represents the family, and the individuality of the woman 
is not brought into prominence; but when the ballot is placed in the hands 
of woman her individuality is enlarged, and she is expected to answer for 
herself the demands of the law and of society on her individual account, 
and not as the weaker member of the family to answer by her husband. This 
naturally draws her out from the dignified and cultivated refinement of her 
womanly position, and brings her into a closer contact with the rougher 
elements of society, which tends to destroy that higher reverence and respect 
which her refinement and dignity in the relation of wife and mother have 
always inspired in those who approached her in her honorable and useful 
retirement. 

When she becomes a voter she will be more or less of a politician, and 
will form political alliances or unite with political parties which will fre- 
quently be antagonistic to those to which her husband belongs. This will 
introduce into the family circle new elements of disagreement and discord 
which will frequently end in unhappy divisions, if not in separation or 
divorce. This must frequently occur when she becomes an active politician, 
identified with a party which is distasteful to her husband. On the other 
hand, if she unites with her husband in party associations and votes with him 
on all occasions so as not to disturb the harmony and happiness of the family, 
then the ballot is of no service, as it simply duplicates the vote of the male 
on each side of the question and leaves the result the same. 

Again, if the family is the unit of society, and the state is composed of an 
aggregation of families, then it is important to society that there be as many 
happy families as possible, and it becomes the duty of man and woman alike 
to unite in the holy relations of matrimony. 



JOSEPH EMERSON BROWN 34 1 

As this is the only legal and proper mode of rendering obedience to 
the early command to multiply and replenish the earth, whatever tends to 
discourage the holy relation of matrimony is in disobedience of this command, 
and any change which encourages such disobedience is violative of the Divine 
law, and can not result in advantage to the state. Before forming this relation 
it is the duty of young men who have to take upon themselves the responsi- 
bilities of providing for and protecting the family to select some profession 
or pursuit that is most congenial to their tastes, and in which they will be 
most likely to be successful; but this can not be permitted to the young 
ladies, or if permitted it can not be practically carried out after matrimony. 

As it might frequently happen that the young man had selected one pro- 
fession or pursuit, and the young lady another, the result would be that after 
marriage she must drop the profession or pursuit of her choice, and employ 
herself in the sacred duties of wife and mother at home, and in rearing, 
educating, and elevating the family, while the husband pursues the profes- 
sion of his choice. 

It may be said, however, that there is a class of young ladies who do not 
choose to marry, and who select professions or avocations and follow them for 
a livelihood. This is true, but this class, compared with the number who unite 
in matrimony with the husbands of their choice, is comparatively very small, 
and it is the duty of society to encourage the increase of marriages rather 
than of celibacy. If the larger number of females select pursuits or professions 
which require them to decline marriage, society to that extent is deprived of 
the advantage resulting from the increase of population by marriage. 

It is said by those who have examined the question closely that the largest 
number of divorces is now found in the communities where the advocates of 
female suffrage are most numerous, and where the individuality of woman 
as related to her husband, which such a doctrine inculcates, is increased to 
the greatest extent. 

If this be true, it is a strong plea in the interests of the family and of 
society against granting the petition of the advocates of woman suffrage. 

After all, this is a local question, which properly belongs to the different 
States of the Union, each acting for itself, and to the Territories of the Union, 
when not acting in conflict with the laws of the United States. 

[Senator Brown then quotes extensively from "an able and well-written 
volume, entitled 'Letters from the Chimney Corner,' written by a cultivated 
lady of Chicago." The omitted passages contain substantially the same senti- 
ments as those just presented by the Senator.] 



Mr. President, it is no part of my purpose in any manner whatever to 
speak disrespectfully of the large number of intelligent ladies, sometimes 



342 CRUSADE FOR THE BALLOT 

called strong-minded, who are constantly going before the public, agitating 
this question of female suffrage. While some of them may, as is frequently 
charged, be courting notoriety, I have no doubt they are generally earnestly 
engaged in a work which, in their opinion, would better their condition and 
would do no injury to society. 

In all this, however, I believe they are mistaken. 

I think the mental and physical structure of the sexes, of itself, sufficiently 
demonstrates the fact that the sterner, more laborious, and more difficult 
duties of society are to be performed by the male sex; while the more delicate 
duties of life, which require less physical strength, and the proper training 
of youth, with the proper discharge of domestic duties, belong to the female 
sex. Nature has so arranged it that the male sex can not attend properly to 
the duties assigned by the law of nature to the female sex, and that the 
female sex can not discharge the more rigorous duties required of the male 
sex. 

This movement is an attempt to reverse the very laws of our being, and 
to drag woman into an arena for which she is not suited, and to devolve 
upon her onerous duties which the Creator never intended that she should 
perform. 

While the husband discharges the laborious and fatiguing duties of im- 
portant official positions, and conducts political campaigns, and discharges 
the duties connected with the ballot-box, or while he bears arms in time of 
war, or discharges executive or judicial duties, or the duties of juryman, 
requiring close confinement and many times great mental fatigue; or while 
the husband in a different sphere of life discharges the laborious duties of 
the plantation, the workshop, or the machine shop, it devolves upon the wife 
to attend to the duties connected with home life, to care for infant children, 
and to train carefully and properly those who in the youthful period are 
further advanced towards maturity. 

The woman with the infant at the breast is in no condition to plow on the 
farm, labor hard in the workshop, discharge the duties of a juryman, conduct 
causes as an advocate in court, preside in important cases as a judge, com- 
mand armies as a general, or bear arms as a private. These duties, and others 
of like character, belong to the male sex; while the more important duties of 
home, to which I have already referred, devolve upon the female sex. We can 
neither reverse the physical nor the moral laws of our nature, and as this 
movement is an attempt to reverse these laws, and to devolve upon the 
female sex important and laborious duties for which they are not by nature 
physically competent, I am not prepared to support this bill. 

My opinion is that a very large majority of the American people, yes, a 
large majority of the female sex, oppose it, and that they act wisely in doing 
so. I therefore protest against its passage. 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA 



America's adventure in imperialist expansion at the end 
of the nineteenth century was hrief but intense. The 
Spanish-American War, begun as a crusade to liberate 
Cuba from the brutalities of Spanish imperial domina- 
tion, ended with the United States in possession of an 
empire of her own. War with Spain was declared in 
April, 1898, after the exploitation of the Cubans, the 
mysterious sinking of the battleship Maine, and the ful- 
minations of the "yellow" press had aroused public in- 
dignation to fever pitch. News of Admiral Dewey's de- 
struction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay electrified 
the nation and sent people to their maps to locate the 
hitherto unfamiliar Philippine Islands. The "splendid 
little war' proceeded without a setback; by August it was 
all over. The terms of the treaty, signed December 10, 
1898, provided that Spain was to relinquish sovereignty 
over Cuba, and to cede outrigfnt the Philippines, Puerto 
Rico, and Guam to the United States. Many Americans, 
prompted by the jingo press and the inflated eloquence 
of imperialist orators, became fascinated with the idea of 
permanent dominion over the islands. What had been 
proclaimed at the outset as a war of humanity and not 
of conquest ended with an increasingly insistent demand 
to hold on to the territories so easily and so gloriously 
acquired. 

343 



344 ruE MISSION OF AMERICA 

There can be no doubt about the intensity of the wave 
of 'patriotic fervor and imperialistic enthusiasm which 
swept the nation at this time. But no single explanation 
of its origin is entirely satisfactory. Certainly it is an 
oversimplification to attribute the chauvinism of the 
period solely to a sensational, irresponsible press— al- 
though the activities of Hearst's New York Journal and 
Piditzer's New York World in competing for circulation 
were undoubtedly an important influence. Nor was it a 
case of business interests crassly fomenting war for profit. 
Indeed, businessmen had in general opposed the war at 
the beginning, although they had not been reluctant to 
take advantage of the possibilities which became apparent 
with the acquisition of new territory. The fact is that the 
18 go's provided an appropriate atmosphere or climate 
for an imperialist adventure. And this climate was the 
product of several factors— political, economic, religious, 
and purely emotional. 

The closing of the western frontier made access to new 
lands, opening of new frontiers, especially enticing. Ad- 
vocates of the strenuous life like Theodore Roosevelt, as 
well as certain college professors and clergymen, disturbed 
at the passing of the frontier, made speeches about na- 
tional virility and strength and sought new outlets for 
the "manly virtues." Internal tensions— violent labor con- 
flict, revolt among the farmers, concentration of wealth 
and power, recurring depressions— made some politicians 
grateful for any issue which would deflect public atten- 
tion. Moreover, a serviceable rationale for imperialism 
had already been laid down in two very influential books, 
]osiah Strong's Our Country— Its Possible Future and Its 
Present Crisis (1885) and Alfred T. Mohan's The In- 
fluence of Sea Power Upon History (1890). Strong had 
argued that it was the mission of the superior Anglo- 
Saxon people to carry the blessings of "spiritual Chris- 
tianity" to the backward areas of the earth. Mohan's 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA 345 

thesis was that abiding national greatness rests on sea 
'power. Sea power, he asserted, exists to promote com- 
merce; it includes a merchant marine, a navy to protect 
it, and colonies to serve as trading and naval bases. 

Zest for territorial expansion was not, of course, un- 
known prior to the 1%90's. Imperialist orators made much 
of the argument that the republic had from its beginning 
embarked upon a career of expansionism. The acquisition 
of Louisiana, Florida, Texas, the Mexican cession, all 
were part of a continuous expansion which was now to 
be carried forward another step. But anti-imperialists 
were quick to distinguish between expansion and im- 
perialism, and to point out significant differences between 
earlier acquisitions and the proposed Philippine policy. 
All former acquisitions, they said, were on this continent, 
and all except Alaska had been contiguous to existing 
borders. They had been thinly peopled when populated 
at all; they had not involved forcible subjection and rule 
of a foreign people by a greatly expanded army or navy. 
And there had always been the expectation that these 
territories would subsequently enter the Union as self- 
governing states. 

From December, 1898, until February, 1&99, the treaty 
with Spain and the question of the retention of the 
'Philippines were debated in the Senate and throughout 
the nation. The expansionists assailed the cowardice of 
"hauling down the flag" and pointed out the economic 
and strategic advantages involved in annexation. There 
was much talk of destiny, the inevitability of expansion, 
duties thrust upon us by the hand of God, inescapable 
responsibilities devolving upon the Anglo-Saxon race, 
the necessity of taking up the white man's burden and 
caring for the child-like Filipinos who were incapable of 
self-government and in need of protection. The anti- 
imperialists invoked the Constitution and the Declara- 
tion of Independence, objecting to Philippine annexation 



346 THE MISSION OF AMERICA 

primarily on the ground that such a policy flatly violated 
the doctrine that governments "derive their just powers 
from the consent of the governed." In addition to humani- 
tarian and ethical arguments they stressed the certainty 
of increased taxes, the wastefulness of the militarism 
which imperialism entailed, the inevitable relationship 
between an imperialist policy and war. 

The treaty was ratified on February 6, partly as the 
result of the influence of William Jennings Bryan, a lead- 
ing anti-imperialist who for reasons which have never 
been entirely understood, urged his Democratic followers 
to support ratification. In his speech on "Imperialism" 1 
he explained that his action had been motivated by a 
desire to end the war first and grant independence later. 
"I thought it safer," he said, "to trust the American people 
to give independence to the Filipinos than to trust the 
accomplishment of that purpose to diplomacy with an 
unfriendly nation." Senator Hoar, a Republican who had 
fought valiantly against the treaty, and who resented 
Bryan's apostasy, thought this "not a convincing argu- 
ment." It was subsequently charged that Bryan wanted 
the treaty accepted so that he could make imperialism a 
campaign issue in 1900. 

Ratification did not end the public debate on American 
policy in the Philippines; it continued throughout 1899 
and iqoo. A few days before the vote in the Senate the 
Filipinos, sensing that they were merely exchanging 
Spanish for American masters, revolted under Emilio 
Aguinaldo. This failure to appreciate the beneficence of 
America's mission, and the consequent necessity for ruth- 
less counter-measures by the military gave rise to consider- 
able uneasiness in this country. Unflattering analogies to 
ijj6 were suggested, with Aguinaldo cast as a dusky 
George Washington, and President McKinley in the role 

1 In a passage deleted from the speech as printed below. See 
explanatory note on page 359. 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA 347 

of George III. Critics of forcible enlightenment sang 
sardonically: 

Underneath the starry flag 
Civilize 'em with a Krag. 2 

Finley Peter Dunnes Mr. Dooley, who had effectively 
satirized the comic-opera aspects of the war with Spain, 
observed in his dialogue on "Expansion": 

We can't give ye anny votes, because we haven't more 
thin enough to go round now; but we'll threat ye th' way 
a father shud threat his childher if we have to break ivry 
bone in ye'er bodies. So come to our ar-rms. . . . 

In October, 1899, the American Anti-Imperialist 
League, led by Carl Schurz, Moorfield Storey, and 
George F. Hoar, proclaimed its platform and invited the 
cooperation of all "who remain loyal to the Declaration 
of Independence and the Constitution of the United 
States." This platform declared: 

We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile 
to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which 
it has been our glory to be free. We regret that it has become 
necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm 
that all men, of whatever race or color, are entitled to life, 
liberty and the pursuit of happiness. . . . We insist that 
the subjugation of any people is "criminal aggression" and 
open disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our Govern- 
ment. 

But the tide of public opinion was running the other 
way; articulate spokesmen for Duty, Destiny, and Expan- 
sion like Theodore Roosevelt and Albert J. Beveridge 
were the heroes of the hour. Beveridge, who perhaps 
more than any other man deserved the title "orator of 
imperialism," had gained national attention with his 
"March of the Flag" speech delivered September 16, 1898, 
at the opening of the Indiana Republican congressional 

2 Army rifle in use at the time. 



348 THE MISSION OF AMERICA 

campaign. This speech, which committed Indiana Repub- 
licans to imperialism, became an effective campaign docu- 
ment and was widely circulated throughout the Middle 
West. Earlier in the year in an address to the Middlesex 
Club of Boston, before the war with Spain had begun 
and when all eyes were fixed on Cuba, Beveridge had 
displayed unprecedented candor in revealing a motive for 
an imperialist policy, and uncanny prescience in predict- 
ing the course of events: 

American factories are making more than the American 
people can use; American soil is producing more than, they 
can consume. Fate has written our policy for us; the trade 
of the world must and shall be ours. And we will get it as 
our mother [England] has told us how. . . . 

. . . In the Pacific is the true field of our earliest operations. 
There Spain has an island empire. . . . The Philippines 
are logically our prst target. 

Elected to the United States Senate in January, 1899, 
but not entitled to take his seat until the following De- 
cember, Beveridge delivered the prst of a series of 
emotional political orations in support of expansion at 
Philadelphia, February 15. The spirit of this address is 
conveyed in its title, "The Republic That Never Retreats." 
In the spring he embarked on a fact-finding tour of the 
Philippine archipelago, returning in the fall with the 
conviction he had held at his departure, that the Filipinos 
were incapable of self-government, and that the United 
States must retain control of the islands indefinitely. On 
January 9, 1900, he delivered his maiden speech in the 
Senate, 3 speaking in support of his own resolution intro- 
duced a few days earlier: "That the Philippine Islands are 
territory belonging to the United States; that it is the 
intention of the United States to retain them as such and 
to establish and maintain such governmental control 
throughout the archipelago as the situation may demand." 

3 Congressional Record, 56th Cong., 1st Sess., vol. 33, pt. I, pp. 
704-712. 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA 349 

In his third sentence, Senator Beveridge sounded his 
keynote: 

The Philippines are ours forever. . . . And just beyond 
the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not 
retreat from either. We will not abandon our opportunity 
in the Orient. We will not renounce our part in the mission 
of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the 
world. 

After dangling before the Senate the rich prizes to be 
had for the taking, he dealt vigorously and at length with 
attacks on imperialism. He then swept into his soaring 
peroration: 

Mr. President, this question is deeper than any question 
of party politics; deeper than any question of the isolated 
policy of our country even; deeper even than any question 
of constitutional power. It is elemental. It is racial. God 
has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic 
peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle 
self-contemplation and self -admiration. No! He has made us 
the master organizers of the world to establish system where 
chaos reigns. 

Beveridge closed with a passionate appeal for the adop- 
tion of his resolution— 'How dare we delay when our 
soldiers' blood is flowing?" When the applause had sub- 
sided, Senator Hoar rose to reply. He congratulated the 
speaker on his "silver speech" and his patriotism. But, he 
went on, 

As I heard his eloquent description of wealth and glory 
and commerce and trade, I listened in vain for those words 
which the American people have been wont to take upon 
their lips in every solemn crisis of their history. . . . The 
words Right, Duty, Freedom, were absent, my friend must 
permit me to say, from that eloquent speech. 

Despite this sober appraisal, the speech produced an 
immediate national sensation. Front-page stories from 
coast to coast lauded the magic of the speaker's eloquence, 
the unanswer ability of his arguments. Telegrams poured 



350 THE MISSION OF AMERICA 

in from all quarters, among them one from Theodore 
Roosevelt, who was delighted with the speech and infuri- 
ated at Hoar's reply. Even Mr. Dooley, who had some 
mordant comments to make on Beveridge's youthfulness, 
florid rhetoric, and vainglorious patriotism, could not 
wholly restrain his admiration for its lyric quality. It was, 
he said, "a gr-reat speech. 'Twas a speech ye cud waltz to." 

The following summer the Democrats once again nomi- 
nated William Jennings Bryan for the Presidency. In his 
speech of acceptance, August 8, igoo, in Indianapolis, 
Bryan made imperialism the paramount issue of the cam- 
paign. Systematically he took up and replied to the prin- 
cipal arguments advanced in defense of imperialist 
expansion, and pledged that if elected he would grant 
independence to the Filipinos and set up an American 
protectorate over the islands. Beveridge replied at Chicago 
in September with his "The Star of Empire," which was 
used hy the Republicans as a national campaign docu- 
ment. In the election which followed, the people voted 
against Bryan and for the policies of the administration. 
McKinley won by an electoral majority of 137, a popular 
plurality of over 800,000; Bryan received twenty-one 
fewer electoral votes than in 1896. Imperialism had tri- 
umphed, temporarily at least. 

The sequel to this expansionist adventure in the Philip- 
pines is well known. Military government was promptly 
replaced in 1901 by a civil commission under the chair- 
manship of William Howard Taft. During subsequent 
years, in which dramatic improvements were made in edu- 
cation, transportation, public health, and general prepa- 
ration for self-government, the islands were administered 
by a series of governors-general, some of whom favored 
independence for the Filipinos, and some of whom did 
not. In 1933, a bill providing for independence after a 
ten-year probationary period passed Congress over Presi- 
dent Hoover's veto, but was not ratified by the Philippine 



THE MISSION OF AMERICA 35 1 

legislature because of certain objectionable economic pro- 
visions. The following year the Tydings-McDuffie Act, 
providing for complete independence in 1046, passed 
Congress, was signed by President Roosevelt March 24, 
1934, and was ratified by the Philippine legislature May 
1, 1934. This act was not motivated entirely, or even 
principally, by American altruism. The glorious visions 
of 1898 had proved illusory. Dreams of opening up orien- 
tal markets via the islands had not been fulfilled; com- 
mercial expectations in the islands themselves had not 
been realized; naval experts considered the archipelago 
indefensible and a military liability; American sugar in- 
terests resented competition from duty-free sugar. Pursu- 
ant to the terms of the Tydings-McDuffie Act, an 
independent Philippine Republic was established July 4, 
1946. 

Today the perfervid speeches of the imperialists, with 
their reiterated themes of racism, national destiny, and 
conquest, make embarrassing reading. They are too pain- 
fully similar to the utterances of a megalomaniac German 
dictator, whose dreams of world domination the Amer- 
ican people so recently helped to frustrate. 



The March of the Flag 
ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 



Born, Highland County, Ohio, October 6, 1862; died % 
Indianapolis, Indiana, April 27, 1927. Graduate of Asbury 
College (now DePauw), 1885. Admitted to bar, 1887; 
practiced law in Indianapolis; became celebrated as a 
political orator. Elected to United States Senate, 1899, 
at age of 36. Served two terms, defeated in 191 1; never 
again held public office. An outspoken nationalist, even 
a jingoist, Beveridge was a liberal in domestic politics. 
One of the "insurgent" Republicans who founded the 
Progressive party, he delivered the keynote address to the 
Progressive national convention in Chicago in 191 2. Un- 
successful candidate for Governor of Indiana (191 2), 
United States Senate (1914 and 1922). Author of a four- 
volume life of John Marshall (1916-1919), and an un- 
finished biography of Lincoln. 



/tis a noble land that God has given us; a land that can 
feed and clothe the world; a land whose coastlines 
would inclose half the countries of Europe; a land set like a sentinel between 
the two imperial oceans of the globe, a greater England with a nobler destiny. 
It is a mighty people that He has planted on this soil; a people sprung 
from the most masterful blood of history; a people perpetually revitalized by 
the virile, man-producing working-folk of all the earth; a people imperial 

Speech opening Indiana Republican Campaign, Tomlinson Hall, Indianapolis, 
September 16, 1898. From The Meaning of the Times and Other Speeches by Albert 
J. Beveridge, copyright © 1908, 1936, used by special permission of the publishers, 
The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. Texts of the speech vary; cf. Thomas B. Reed, ed., 
Modern Eloquence (New York: American Law Book Co., 1903), XI, pp. 224-243. 

352 



ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 353 

by virtue of their power, by right of their institutions, by authority of their 
Heaven-directed purposes— the propagandists and not the misers of liberty. 

It is a glorious history our God has bestowed upon His chosen people; a 
history heroic with faith in our mission and our future; a history of statesmen 
who flung the boundaries of the Republic out into unexplored lands and 
savage wilderness; a history of soldiers who carried the flag across blazing 
deserts and through the ranks of hostile mountains, even to the gates of 
sunset; a history of a multiplying people who overran a continent in half a 
century; a history of prophets who saw the consequences of evils inherited 
from the past and of martyrs who died to save us from them; a history divinely 
logical, in the process of whose tremendous reasoning we find ourselves to-day. 

Therefore, in this campaign, the question is larger than a party question. 
It is an American question. It is a world question. Shall the American people 
continue their march toward the commercial supremacy of the world? Shall 
free institutions broaden their blessed reign as the children of liberty wax in 
strength, until the empire of our principles is established over the hearts of 
all mankind? 

Have we no mission to perform, no duty to discharge to our fellow-man? 
Has God endowed us with gifts beyond our deserts and marked us as the 
people of His peculiar favor, merely to rot in our own selfishness, as men and 
nations must, who take cowardice for their companion and self for their deity 
—as China has, as India has, as Egypt has? 

Shall we be as the man who had one talent and hid it, or as he who had 
ten talents and used them until they grew to riches? And shall we reap the 
reward that waits on our discharge of our high duty; shall we occupy new 
markets for what our farmers raise, our factories make, our merchants sell- 
aye, and, please God, new markets for what our ships shall carry? 

Hawaii is ours; Porto Rico is to be ours; at the prayer of her people Cuba 
finally will be ours; in the islands of the East, even to the gates of Asia, coal- 
ing stations are to be ours at the very least; the flag of a liberal government 
is to float over the Philippines, and may it be the banner that Taylor unfurled 
in Texas and Fremont carried to the coast. 

The Opposition tells us that we ought not to govern a people without their 
consent. I answer, The rule of liberty that all just government derives its 
authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are 
capable of self-government. We govern the Indians without their consent, 
we govern our territories without their consent, we govern our children with- 
out their consent. How do they know that our government would be without 
their consent? Would not the people of the Philippines prefer the just, 
humane, civilizing government of this Republic to the savage, bloody rule of 
pillage and extortion from which we have rescued them? 

And, regardless of this formula of words made only for enlightened, self- 



354 THE MISSION OF AMERICA 

governing people, do we owe no duty to the world? Shall we turn these 
peoples back to the reeking hands from which we have taken them? Shall 
we abandon them, with Germany, England, Japan, hungering for them? Shall 
we save them from those nations, to give them a self-rule of tragedy? 

They ask us how we shall govern these new possessions. I answer: Out of 
local conditions and the necessities of the case methods of government will 
grow. If England can govern foreign lands, so can America. If Germany can 
govern foreign lands, so can America. If they can supervise protectorates, so 
can America. Why is it more difficult to administer Hawaii than New Mexico 
or California? Both had a savage and an alien population; both were more 
remote from the seat of government when they came under our dominion 
than the Philippines are to-day. 

Will you say by your vote that American ability to govern has decayed; 
that a century's experience in self-rule has failed of a result? Will you affirm 
by your vote that you are an infidel to American power and practical sense? 
Or will you say that ours is the blood of government; ours the heart of domin- 
ion; ours the brain and genius of administration? Will you remember that 
we do but what our fathers did— we but pitch the tents of liberty farther 
westward, farther southward— we only continue the march of the flag? 

The march of the flag! In 1789 the flag of the Republic waved over 
4,000,000 souls in thirteen states, and their savage territory which stretched 
to the Mississippi, to Canada, to the Floridas. The timid minds of that day 
said that no new territory was needed, and, for the hour, they were right. 
But Jefferson, through whose intellect the centuries marched; Jefferson, who 
dreamed of Cuba as an American state; Jefferson, the first Imperialist of the 
Republic— Jefferson acquired that imperial territory which swept from the 
Mississippi to the mountains, from Texas to the British possessions, and the 
march of the flag began! 

The infidels to the gospel of liberty raved, but the flag swept on! The title 
to that noble land out of which Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana 
have been carved was uncertain; Jefferson, strict constructionist of constitu- 
tional power though he was, obeyed the Anglo-Saxon impulse within him, 
whose watchword then and whose watchword throughout the world to-day is, 
"Forward!": another empire was added to the Republic, and the march of the 
flag went on! 

Those who deny the power of free institutions to expand urged every argu- 
ment, and more, that we hear, to-day; but the people's judgment approved 
the command of their blood, and the march of the flag went on! 

A screen of land from New Orleans to Florida shut us from the Gulf, and 
over this and the Everglade Peninsula waved the saffron flag of Spain; 
Andrew Jackson seized both, the American people stood at his back, and, 
under Monroe, the Floridas came under the dominion of the Republic, and 



ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 355 

the march of the flag went on! The Cassandras prophesied every prophecy 
of despair we hear today; but the march of the flag went on! 

Then Texas responded to the bugle calls of liberty, and the march of the 
flag went on! And, at last, we waged war with Mexico, and the flag swept 
over the southwest, over peerless California, past the Gate of Gold to Oregon 
on the north, and from ocean to ocean its folds of glory blazed. 

And, now, obeying the same voice that Jefferson heard and obeyed, that 
Jackson heard and obeyed, that Monroe heard and obeyed, that Seward heard 
and obeyed, that Grant heard and obeyed, that Harrison heard and obeyed, 
our President to-day plants the flag over the islands of the seas, outposts of 
commerce, citadels of national security, and the march of the flag goes on! 

Distance and oceans are no arguments. The fact that all the territory our 
fathers bought and seized is contiguous, is no argument. In 1819 Florida was 
farther from New York than Porto Rico is from Chicago today; Texas, farther 
from Washington in 1845 than Hawaii is from Boston in 1898; California, 
more inaccessible in 1847 tnan tne Philippines are now. Gibraltar is farther 
from London than Havana is from Washington; Melbourne is farther from 
Liverpool than Manila is from San Francisco. 

The ocean does not separate us from lands of our duty and desire— the 
oceans join us, rivers never to be dredged, canals never to be repaired. Steam 
joins us; electricity joins us— the very elements are in league with our destiny. 
Cuba not contiguous! Porto Rico not contiguous! Hawaii and the Philippines 
not contiguous! The oceans make them contiguous. And our navy will make 
them contiguous. 

But the Opposition is right— there is a difference. We did not need the 
western Mississippi Valley when we acquired it, nor Florida, nor Texas, nor 
California, nor the royal provinces of the far northwest. We had no emigrants 
to people this imperial wilderness, no money to develop it, even no highways 
to cover it. No trade awaited us in its savage fastnesses. Our productions were 
not greater than our trade. There was not one reason for the land-lust of our 
statesmen from Jefferson to Grant, other than the prophet and the Saxon 
within them. But, to-day, we are raising more than we can consume, making 
more than we can use. Therefore we must find new markets for our produce. 

And so, while we did not need the territory taken during the past century 
at the time it was acquired, we do need what we have taken in 1898, and we 
need it now. The resources and the commerce of these immensely rich domin- 
ions will be increased as much as American energy is greater than Spanish 
sloth. In Cuba, alone, there are 15,000,000 acres of forest unacquainted with 
the ax, exhaustless mines of iron, priceless deposits of manganese, millions of 
dollars' worth of which we must buy, to-day, from the Black Sea districts. 
There are millions of acres yet unexplored. 

The resources of Porto Rico have only been trifled with. The riches of the 



356 THE MISSION OF AMERICA 

Philippines have hardly been touched by the finger-tips of modern methods. 
And they produce what we consume, and consume what we produce— the 
very predestination of reciprocity— a reciprocity "not made with hands, eternal 
in the heavens." They sell hemp, sugar, coconuts, fruits of the tropics, timber 
of price like mahogany; they buy flour, clothing, tools, implements, machinery 
and all that we can raise and make. Their trade will be ours in time. Do you 
indorse that policy with your vote? 

Cuba is as large as Pennsylvania, and is the richest spot on the globe. 
Hawaii is as large as New Jersey; Porto Rico half as large as Hawaii; the 
Philippines larger than all New England, New York, New Jersey and Dela- 
ware combined. Together they are larger than the British Isles, larger than 
France, larger than Germany, larger than Japan. 

If any man tells you that trade depends on cheapness and not on govern- 
ment influence, ask him why England does not abandon South Africa, Egypt, 
India. Why does France seize South China, Germany the vast region whose 
port is Kiouchou? 

Our trade with Porto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines must be as free as 
between the states of the Union, because they are American territory, while 
every other nation on earth must pay our tariff before they can compete with 
us. Until Cuba shall ask for annexation, our trade with her will, at the very 
least, be like the preferential trade of Canada with England. That, and the 
excellence of our goods and products; that, and the convenience of traffic; that, 
and the kinship of interests and destiny, will give the monopoly of these 
markets to the American people. 

The commercial supremacy of the Republic means that this Nation is to be 
the sovereign factor in the peace of the world. For the conflicts of the future 
are to be conflicts of trade— struggles for markets— commercial wars for exist- 
ence. And the golden rule of peace is impregnability of position and invinci- 
bility of preparedness. So, we see England, the greatest strategist of history, 
plant her flag and her cannon on Gibraltar, at Quebec, in the Bermudas, at 
Vancouver, everywhere. 

So Hawaii furnishes us a naval base in the heart of the Pacific; the Ladrones 
another, a voyage further on; Manila another, at the gates of Asia— Asia, to 
the trade of whose hundreds of millions American merchants, manufacturers, 
farmers, have as good right as those of Germany or France or Russia or Eng- 
land; Asia, whose commerce with the United Kingdom alone amounts to 
hundreds of millions of dollars every year; Asia, to whom Germany looks to 
take her surplus products; Asia, whose doors must not be shut against Ameri- 
can trade. Within five decades the bulk of Oriental commerce will be ours. 



There are so many real things to be done— canals to be dug, railways to be 
laid, forests to be felled, cities to be builded, fields to be tilled, markets to be 



ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 357 

won, ships to be launched, peoples to be saved, civilization to be proclaimed 
and the flag of liberty flung to the eager air of every sea. Is this an hour to 
waste upon triflers with nature's laws? Is this a season to give our destiny over 
to word-mongers and prosperity- wreckers? No! It is an hour to remember our 
duty to our homes. It is a moment to realize the opportunities fate has 
opened to us. And so it is an hour for us to stand by the Government. 

Wonderfully has God guided us. Yonder at Bunker Hill and Yorktown His 
providence was above us. At New Orleans and on ensanguined seas His hand 
sustained us. Abraham Lincoln was His minister and His was the altar of 
freedom the Nation's soldiers set up on a hundred battle-fields. His power 
directed Dewey in the East and delivered the Spanish fleet into our hands, as 
He delivered the elder Armada into the hands of our English sires two cen- 
turies ago. The American people can not use a dishonest medium of exchange; 
it is ours to set the world its example of right and honor. We can not fly from 
our world duties; it is ours to execute the purpose of a fate that has driven us 
to be greater than our small intentions. We can not retreat from any soil 
where Providence has unfurled our banner; it is ours to save that soil for 
liberty and civilization. 



Imperialism 

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 



Born, Salem, Illinois, March ig, i860; died, Dayton, Ten- 
nessee, July 26, 1925. Graduate of Illinois College 
(1881), and Union College of Law, Chicago (1883). 
Practiced law in Jacksonville, Illinois; moved (1887) to 
Lincoln, Nebraska. United States Representative, 1891- 
1895. Unsuccessful candidate for United States Senate, 
1804, and for Presidency, 1896, 1900, 1908. Edited 
weekly Commoner, 1901-1913. Secretary of State under 
Wilson; resigned June, 19 15. A perennial Chautauqua 
lecturer, his most famous lecture was "The Prince of 
Peace." Devoted final years to a defense of religious fun- 
damentalism; appeared for the prosecution in Scopes trial 
in Tennessee (1925); died shortly after close of this trial. 



M 



r. Chairman and Members of the Notification Com- 
mittee: I shall, at an early day, and in a more 
formal manner, accept the nomination which you tender, and shall at that 
time discuss the various questions covered by the Democratic platform. It 
may not be out of place, however, to submit a few observations at this 
time upon the general character of the contest before us and upon the 
question which is declared to be of paramount importance in this campaign. 
When I say that the contest of 1900 is a contest between Democracy on 
the one hand and plutocracy on the other I do not mean to say that all 
our opponents have deliberately chosen to give to organized wealth a 
predominating influence in the affairs of the Government, but I do assert 

Speech accepting Democratic nomination for the Presidency, Indianapolis, Indiana, 
August 8, 1900. Speeches of William Jennings Bryan (New York: Funk & Wagnalls 
Company, 1909), II, pp. 17-49. 

358 



WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 359 

that on the important issues of the day the Republican party is dominated 
by those influences which constantly tend to substitute the worship of 
mammon for the protection of the rights of man. 

[Bryan continues his observations upon "the general character of the contest" 
by contrasting the Republican and Democratic parties. He then explains 
that he voted for the Philippine treaty because he thought it better to end 
the war first, and then to give the Filipinos their independence. He then takes 
up the question of imperialism.] 



Those who would have this Nation enter upon a career of empire must 
consider, not only the effect of imperialism on the Filipinos, but they must 
also calculate its effects upon our own nation. We cannot repudiate the 
principle of self-government in the Philippines without weakening that 
principle here. 

Lincoln said that the safety of this Nation was not in its fleets, its armies, 
or its forts, but in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, 
in all lands, everywhere, and he warned his countrymen that they could 
not destroy this spirit without planting the seeds of despotism at their 
own doors. 

Even now we are beginning to see the paralyzing influence of imperialism. 
Heretofore this Nation has been prompt to express its sympathy with those 
who were fighting for civil liberty. While our sphere of activity has been 
limited to the Western Hemisphere, our sympathies have not been bounded 
by the seas. We have felt it due to ourselves and to the world, as well as 
to those who were struggling for the right to govern themselves, to proclaim 
the interest which our people have, from the date of their own independence, 
felt in every contest between human rights and arbitrary power. 

Three-quarters of a century ago, when our nation was small, the struggles 
of Greece aroused our people, and Webster and Clay gave eloquent ex- 
pression to the universal desire for Grecian independence. In 1898 all 
parties manifested a lively interest in the success of the Cubans, but now 
when a war is in progress in South Africa, which must result in the ex- 
tension of the monarchical idea, or in the triumph of a republic, the advocates 
of imperialism in this country dare not say a word in behalf of the 
Boers. 

Sympathy for the Boers does not arise from any unfriendliness towards 
England; the American people are not unfriendly toward the people of 
any nation. This sympathy is due to the fact that, as stated in our platform, 
we believe in the principles of self-government and reject, as did our fore- 
fathers, the claims of monarchy. If this nation surrenders its belief in the 
universal application of the principles set forth in the Declaration of In- 



360 THE MISSION OF AMERICA 

dependence, it will lose the prestige and influence which it has enjoyed 
among the nations as an exponent of popular government. 

Our opponents, conscious of the weakness of their cause, seek to con- 
fuse imperialism with expansion, and have even dared to claim Jefferson 
as a supporter of their policy. Jefferson spoke so freely and used language 
with such precision that no one can be ignorant of his views. On one 
occasion he declared: "If there be one principle more deeply rooted than 
any other in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing 
to do with conquest." And again he said: "Conquest is not in our principles; 
it is inconsistent with our government." 

The forcible annexation of territory to be governed by arbitrary power 
differs as much from the acquisition of territory to be built up into States 
as a monarchy differs from a democracy. The Democratic party does not 
oppose expansion when expansion enlarges the area of the Republic 
and incorporates land which can be settled by American citizens, or 
adds to our population people who are willing to become citizens and are 
capable of discharging their duties as such. 

The acquisition of the Louisiana territory, Florida, Texas and other tracts 
which have been secured from time to time enlarged the Republic and the 
Constitution followed the flag into the new territory. It is now proposed to 
seize upon distant territory already more densely populated than our own 
country and to force upon the people a government for which there is 
no warrant in our Constitution or our laws. 

Even the argument that this earth belongs to those who desire to 
cultivate it and who have the physical power to acquire it cannot be in- 
voked to justify the appropriation of the Philippine Islands by the United 
States. If the islands were uninhabited American citizens would not be 
willing to go there and till the soil. The white race will not live so near 
the equator. Other nations have tried to colonize in the same latitude. 
The Netherlands have controlled Java for three hundred years and yet 
today there are less than sixty thousand people of European birth scattered 
among the twenty-five million natives. 

After a century and a half of English domination in India, less than one- 
twentieth of one per cent of the people of India are of English birth, and 
it requires an army of seventy thousand British soldiers to take care of 
the tax collectors. Spain had asserted title to the Philippine Islands for 
three centuries and yet when our fleet entered Manila bay there were 
less than ten thousand Spaniards residing in the Philippines. 

A colonial policy means that we shall send to the Philippine Islands a 
few traders, a few taskmasters and a few office-holders and an army large 
enough to support the authority of a small fraction of the people while 
they rule the natives. 



WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 36 1 

If we have an imperial policy we must have a great standing army as 
its natural and necessary complement. The spirit which will justify the 
forcible annexation of the Philippine Islands will justify the seizure of 
other islands and the domination of other people, and with wars of con- 
quest we can expect a certain, if not rapid, growth of our military establish- 
ment. 

[Mr. Bryan warns against the dangers of a large standing army. He then 
discusses the future status of the Filipino, implying that since he is not 
to be a citizen, he must necessarily be a subject.] 



What is our title to the Philippine Islands? Do we hold them by treaty 
or by conquest? Did we buy them or did we take them? Did we purchase 
the people? If not, how did we secure title to them? Were they thrown in 
with the land? Will the Republicans say that inanimate earth has value 
but that when that earth is molded by the divine hand and stamped with 
the likeness of the Creator it becomes a fixture and passes with the soil? 
If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, 
it is impossible to secure title to people, either by force or by purchase. 

We could extinguish Spain's title by treaty, but if we hold title we must 
hold it by some method consistent with our ideas of government. When we 
made allies of the Filipinos and armed them to fight against Spain, we dis- 
puted Spain's title. If we buy Spain's title we are not innocent purchasers. 

There can be no doubt that we accepted and utilized the services of the 
Filipinos, and that when we did so we had full knowledge that they were 
fighting for their own independence, and I submit that history furnishes 
no example of turpitude baser than ours if we now substitute our yoke for 
the Spanish yoke. 

Let us consider briefly the reasons which have been given in support of 
an imperialistic policy. Some say that it is our duty to hold the Philippine 
Islands. But duty is not an argument; it is a conclusion. To ascertain what 
our duty is, in any emergency, we must apply well-settled and generally 
accepted principles. It is our duty to avoid stealing, no matter whether 
the thing to be stolen is of great or little value. It is our duty to avoid killing 
a human being, no matter where the human being lives or to what race 
or class he belongs. 

Every one recognizes the obligation imposed upon individuals to observe 
both the human and the moral law, but as some deny the application of 
those laws to nations, it may not be out of place to quote the opinions of 
others. Jefferson, than whom there is no higher political authority, said: 
"I know of but one code of morality for men, whether acting singly or 
collectively." 



362 THE MISSION OF AMERICA 

Franklin, whose learning, wisdom and virtue are a part of the priceless 
legacy bequeathed to us from the revolutionary days, exprest the same idea 
in even stronger language when he said: 

Justice is strictly due between neighbor nations as between neighbor citizens. 
A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang as when single; 
and the nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang. 

Many may dare to do in crowds what they would not dare to do as 
individuals, but the moral character of an act is not determined by the 
number of those who join it. Force can defend a right, but force has never 
yet created a right. If it was true, as declared in the resolutions of inter- 
vention, that the Cubans "are and of right ought to be free and independent" 
(language taken from the Declaration of Independence), it is equally true 
that the Filipinos "are and of right ought to be free and independent." 

The right of the Cubans to freedom was not based upon their proximity 
to the United States, nor upon the language which they spoke, nor yet 
upon the race or races to which they belonged. Congress by a practically 
unanimous vote declared that the principles enunciated at Philadelphia 
in 1776 were still alive and applicable to the Cubans. Who will draw a line 
between the natural rights of the Cubans and the Filipinos? Who will say 
that the former has a right to liberty and that the latter has no rights which 
we are bound to respect? And, if the Filipinos "are and of right ought to 
be free and independent," what right have we to force our government upon 
them without their consent? Before our duty can be ascertained their 
rights must be determined, and when their rights are once determined 
it is as much our duty to respect those rights as it was the duty of Spain 
to respect the rights of the people of Cuba or the duty of England to respect 
the rights of the American colonists. Rights never conflict; duties never 
clash. Can it be our duty to usurp political rights which belong to others? 
Can it be our duty to kill those who, following the example of our fore- 
fathers, love liberty well enough to fight for it? 

Some poet has described the terror which overcame a soldier who in 
the midst of the battle discovered that he had slain his brother. It is written 
"All ye are brethren." Let us hope for the coming of the day when human 
life— which when once destroyed cannot be restored— will be so sacred that 
it will never be taken except when necessary to punish a crime already 
committed, or to prevent a crime about to be committed. 

It is said that we have assumed before the world obligations which make 
it necessary for us to permanently maintain a government in the Philippine 
Islands. I reply first, that the highest obligation of this nation is to be true 
to itself. No obligation to any particular nations, or to all the nations 
combined, can require the abandonment of our theory of government, and 



WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 363 

the substitution of doctrines against which our whole national life has been 
a protest. And, second, that our obligation to the Filipinos, who inhabit the 
islands, is greater than any obligation which we can owe to foreigners 
who have a temporary residence in the Philippines or desire to trade there. 
It is argued by some that the Filipinos are incapable of self-government 
and that, therefore, we owe it to the world to take control of them. Admiral 
Dewey, in an official report to the Navy Department, declared the Filipinos 
more capable of self-government than the Cubans and said that he based 
his opinion upon a knowledge of both races. But I will not rest the case upon 
the relative advancement of the Filipinos. Henry Clay, in defending the 
right of the people of South America to self-government said: 

It is the doctrine of thrones that man is too ignorant to govern himself. Their 
partizans assert his incapacity in reference to all nations; if they cannot command 
universal assent to the proposition, it is then demanded to particular nations; 
and our pride and our presumption too often make converts of us. I contend 
that it is to arraign the disposition of Providence himself to suppose that he has 
created beings incapable of governing themselves, and to be trampled on by 
kings. Self-government is the natural government of man. 

Clay was right. There are degrees of proficiency in the art of self- 
government, but it is a reflection upon the Creator to say that he denied 
to any people the capacity for self-government. Once admit that some 
people are capable of self-government and that others are not and that the 
capable people have a right to seize upon and govern the incapable, and 
you make force— brute force— the only foundation of government and invite 
the reign of a despot. I am not willing to believe that an all-wise and an 
all-loving God created the Filipinos and then left them thousands of years 
helpless until the islands attracted the attention of European nations. 

Republicans ask, "Shall we haul down the flag that floats over our dead 
in the Philippines?" The same question might have been asked, when the 
American flag floated over Chapultepec and waved over the dead who fell 
there; but the tourist who visits the City of Mexico finds there a national 
cemetery owned by the United States and cared for by an American citizen. 

Our flag still floats over our dead, but when the treaty with Mexico 
was signed American authority withdrew to the Rio Grande, and I venture 
the opinion that during the last fifty years the people of Mexico have made 
more progress under the stimulus of independence and self-government 
than they would have made under a carpet-bag government held in place 
by bayonets. The United States and Mexico, friendly republics, are each 
stronger and happier than they would have been had the former been 
cursed and the latter crushed by an imperialistic policy disguised as "benevo- 
lent assimilation. " 



364 THE MISSION OF AMERICA 

"Can we not govern colonies?" we are asked. The question is not what 
we can do, but what we ought to do. This nation can do whatever it 
desires to do, but it must accept responsibility for what it does. If the Con- 
stitution stands in the way, the people can amend the Constitution. I 
repeat, the nation can do whatever it desires to do, but it cannot avoid the 
natural and legitimate results of its own conduct. 

The young man upon reaching his majority can do what he pleases. He 
can disregard the teachings of his parents; he can trample upon all that 
he has been taught to consider sacred; he can disobey the laws of the 
State, the laws of society and the laws of God. He can stamp failure 
upon his life and make his very existence a curse to his fellow men, and 
he can bring his father and mother in sorrow to the grave; but he cannot 
annul the sentence, "The wages of sin is death." 

And so with the nation. It is of age and it can do what it pleases; it can 
spurn the traditions of the past; it can repudiate the principles upon which 
the nation rests; it can employ force instead of reason; it can substitute 
might for right; it can conquer weaker people; it can exploit their lands, 
appropriate their property and kill their people; but it cannot repeal the 
moral law or escape the punishment decreed for the violation of human 
rights. . . . 

Some argue that American rule in the Philippine Islands will result in 
the better education of the Filipinos. Be not deceived. If we expect to 
maintain a colonial policy, we shall not find it to our advantage to educate 
the people. The educated Filipinos are now in revolt against us, and the 
most ignorant ones have made the least resistance to our domination. If 
we are to govern them without their consent and give them no voice 
in determining the taxes which they must pay, we dare not educate them, 
lest they learn to read the Declaration of Independence and Constitution 
of the United States and mock us for our inconsistency. 

The principal arguments, however, advanced by those who enter upon 
a defense of imperialism are: 

First— That we must improve the present opportunity to become a world 
power and enter into international politics. 

Second— That our commercial interests in the Philippine Islands and in 
the Orient make it necessary for us to hold the islands permanently. 

Third— That the spread of the Christian religion will be facilitated by a 
colonial policy. 

Fourth— That there is no honorable retreat from the position which the 
nation has taken. 

The first argument is addrest to the nation's pride and the second to 
the nation's pocket-book. The third is intended for the church member 
and the fourth for the partizan. 



WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 365 

It is sufficient answer to the first argument to say that for more than 
a century this nation has been a world power. For ten decades it has been 
the most potent influence in the world. Not only has it been a world 
power, but it has done more to shape the politics of the human race than 
all the other nations of the world combined. Because our Declaration of 
Independence was promulgated others have been promulgated. Because the 
patriots of 1776 fought for liberty others have fought for it. Because our 
Constitution was adopted other constitutions have been adopted. 

The growth of the principle of self-government, planted on American 
soil, has been the overshadowing political fact of the nineteenth century. 
It has made this nation conspicuous among the nations and given it a place 
in history such as no other nation has ever enjoyed. Nothing has been 
able to check the onward march of this idea. I am not willing that this 
nation shall cast aside the omnipotent weapon of truth to seize again the 
weapons of physical warfare. I would not exchange the glory of this 
Republic for the glory of all the empires that have risen and fallen since 
time began. 

The permanent chairman of the last Republican National Convention 
presented the pecuniary argument in all its baldness when he said: 

We make no hypocritical pretense of being interested in the Philippines solely 
on account of others. While we regard the welfare of those people as a sacred 
trust, we regard the welfare of the American people first. We see our duty to 
ourselves as well as to others. We believe in trade expansion. By every legitimate 
means within the province of government and constitution we mean to stimulate 
the expansion of our trade and open new markets. 

This is the commercial argument. It is based upon the theory that war can 
be rightly waged for pecuniary advantage, and that it is profitable to purchase 
trade by force and violence. 



The pecuniary argument, the more effective with certain classes, is not 
likely to be used so often or presented with so much enthusiasm as the 
religious argument. If what has been termed the "gunpowder gospel" were 
urged against the Filipinos only it would be a sufficient answer to say that 
a majority of the Filipinos are now members of one branch of the Christian 
church; but the principle involved is one of much wider application and 
challenges serious consideration. 

The religious argument varies in positiveness from a passive belief that 
Providence delivered the Filipinos into our hands, for their good and our 
glory, to the exultation of the minister who said that we ought to "thrash 
the natives (Filipinos) until they understand who we are," and that "every 
bullet sent, every cannon shot and every flag waved means righteousness." 



366 THE MISSION OF AMERICA 

We cannot approve of this doctrine in one place unless we are willing 
to apply it everywhere. If there is poison in the blood of the hand it will 
ultimately reach the heart. It is equally true that forcible Christianity, if 
planted under the American flag in the far-away Orient, will sooner or 
later be transplanted upon American soil. 

If true Christianity consists in carrying out in our daily lives the teachings 
of Christ, who will say that we are commanded to civilize with dynamite 
and proselyte with the sword? He who would declare the divine will must 
prove his authority either by Holy Writ or by evidence of a special 
dispensation. 

Imperialism finds no warrant in the Bible. The command, "Go ye into 
all the world and preach the gospel to every creature," has no Gatling gun 
attachment. When Jesus visited a village of Samaria and the people refused 
to receive him, some of the disciples suggested that fire should be called 
down from Heaven to avenge the insult; but the Master rebuked them and 
said: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of; for the Son of Man 
is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." Suppose he had said: 
"We will thrash them until they understand who we are," how different 
would have been the history of Christianity! Compare, if you will, the 
swaggering, bullying, brutal doctrine of imperialism with the golden rule 
and the commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 

Love, not force, was the weapon of the Nazarene; sacrifice for others, 
not the exploitation of them, was His method of reaching the human 
heart. A missionary recently told me that the Stars and Stripes once saved 
his life because his assailant recognized our flag as a flag that had no blood 
upon it. 

Let it be known that our missionaries are seeking souls instead of sov- 
ereignty; let it be known that instead of being the advance guard of con- 
quering armies, they are going forth to help and uplift, having their loins 
girt about with truth and their feet shod with the preparation of the gospel 
of peace, wearing the breastplate of righteousness and carrying the sword 
of the spirit; let it be known that they are citizens of a nation which respects 
the rights of the citizens of other nations as carefully as it protects the rights 
of its own citizens, and the welcome given to our missionaries will be more 
cordial than the welcome extended to the missionaries of any other 
nation. 

The argument made by some that it was unfortunate for the nation 
that it had anything to do with the Philippine Islands, but that the naval 
victory at Manila made the permanent acquisition of those islands necessary, 
is also unsound. We won a naval victory at Santiago, but that did not 
compel us to hold Cuba. 

The shedding of American blood in the Philippine Islands does not make 



WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 367 

it imperative that we should retain possession forever; American blood was 
shed at San Juan Hill and El Caney, and yet the President has promised 
the Cubans independence. The fact that the American flag floats over 
Manila does not compel us to exercise perpetual sovereignty over the islands; 
the American flag floats over Havana to-day, but the President has promised 
to haul it down when the flag of the Cuban Republic is ready to rise in 
its place. Better a thousand times that our flag in the Orient give way to 
a flag representing the idea of self-government than that the flag of this 
Republic should become the flag of an empire. 

There is an easy, honest, honorable solution of the Philippine question. 
It is set forth in the Democratic platform and it is submitted with confidence 
to the American people. This plan I unreservedly indorse. If elected, I will 
convene Congress in extraordinary session as soon as inaugurated and recom- 
mend an immediate declaration of the nation's purpose, first, to establish a 
stable form of government in the Philippine Islands, just as we are now 
establishing a stable form of government in Cuba; second, to give inde- 
pendence to the Filipinos as we have promised to give independence to 
the Cubans; third, to protect the Filipinos from outside interference while 
they work out their destiny, just as we have protected the republics of 
Central and South America, and are, by the Monroe doctrine, pledged 
to protect Cuba. 

A European protectorate often results in the plundering of the ward by 
the guardian. An American protectorate gives to the nation protected the 
advantage of our strength, without making it the victim of our greed. For 
three-quarters of a century the Monroe doctrine has been a shield to 
neighboring republics and yet it has imposed no pecuniary burden upon 
us. After the Filipinos had aided us in the war against Spain, we could 
not honorably turn them over to their former masters; we could not leave 
them to be the victims of the ambitious designs of European nations, and 
since we do not desire to make them a part of us or to hold them as subjects, 
we propose the only alternative, namely, to give them independence and 
guard them against molestation from without. 

When our opponents are unable to defend their position by argument 
they fall back upon the assertion that it is destiny, and insist that we must 
submit to it, no matter how much it violates our moral precepts and our 
principles of government. This is a complacent philosophy. It obliterates 
the distinction between right and wrong and makes individuals and nations 
the helpless victims of circumstance. 

Destiny is the subterfuge of the invertebrate, who, lacking the courage 
to oppose error, seeks some plausible excuse for supporting it. Washington 
said that the destiny of the republican form of government was deeply, if 
not finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the American people. 



368 THE MISSION OF AMERICA 

How different Washington's definition of destiny from the Republican 
definition! 



I can conceive of a national destiny surpassing the glories of the present 
and the past— a destiny which meets the responsibilities of to-day and 
measures up to the possibilities of the future. Behold a republic, resting 
securely upon the foundation stones quarried by revolutionary patriots 
from the mountain of eternal truth— a republic applying in practise and 
proclaiming to the world the self-evident propositions that all men are 
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable 
rights; that governments are instituted among men to secure these rights, 
and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the 
governed. Behold a republic in which civil and religious liberty stimulate 
all to earnest endeavor and in which the law restrains every hand uplifted for 
a neighbor's injury— a republic in which every citizen is a sovereign, but 
in which no one cares or dares to wear a crown. Behold a republic standing 
erect while empires all around are bowed beneath the weight of their own 
armaments— a republic whose flag is loved while other flags are only feared. 
Behold a republic increasing in population, in wealth, in strength and in 
influence, solving the problems of civilization and hastening the coming of 
an universal brotherhood— a republic which shakes thrones and dissolves 
aristocracies by its silent example and gives light and inspiration to those 
who sit in darkness. Behold a republic gradually but surely becoming the 
supreme moral factor in the world's progress and the accepted arbiter of the 
world's disputes— a republic whose history, like the path of the just, "is as 
the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." 



Notes on Sources and 
Supplementary Reading 



T 



his is in no sense a comprehensive bibliography. These 
suggestions are intended only to open up opportunities 
for further study of the issues presented in this volume. Hence this list is 
restricted to a few outstanding biographies, specialized studies, and additional 
speeches. We have omitted mention of all general histories, unpublished studies 
such as dissertations and manuscripts, and most other materials not readily 
available in any reasonably well-stocked library. 

Ratification of the Federal Constitution 

Moses Coit Tyler, Patrick Henry (1887) is a corrective to William Wirt's 
earlier biography. Henry's speaking is analyzed in Louis A. Mallory, "Patrick 
Henry," in A History and Criticism of American Public Address (2 vols., 1943), 
edited by W. N. Brigance. Irving Brant, James Madison, Father of the Con- 
stitution, 1787-1800 (1950) is one of a series of books on Madison by this 
author. 

See Carl Van Doren, The Great Rehearsal (1948) for a dramatic account of 
the making and ratification of the Constitution. Hamilton's speaking is discussed 
in Bower Aly, The Rhetoric of Alexander Hamilton (1941), and in Aly's essay 
on Hamilton in A History and Criticism of American Public Address (1955), III, 
edited by Marie K. Hochmuth. See also Ralph H. Gabriel, ed., Hamilton, Madison 
and jay on the Constitution; Selections From the Federalist Papers (1954) in the 
American Heritage Series. 

The extended debate between Henry and Madison is found in Jonathan 
Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the 
Federal Constitution (5 vols., 1901), III. Frank Moore, ed., American Eloquence 
(2 vols., 1 881) has speeches on the Federal Constitution by Henry, Madison, 
and Hamilton. 



The Basis of Political Society: A Spectrum of Views 

For David Daggett see Dictionary of American Biography. The standard 
biography of Jefferson is Dumas Malone, ]efferson and His Times (2 vols., 

37i 



372. NOTES ON SOURCES AND SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

1 948-1 951). Richard N. Current, Daniel Webster and the Rise of National 
Conservatism (1955) is useful here, as is Russel B. Nye, George Bancroft: 
Brahmin Rebel (1944). Valuable for background on men, ideas, and period are 
Albert J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall (4 vols., 1 916-19 19); Vernon 
L. Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought (3 vols., 1927); and Arthur 
M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (1946). 

Other speeches advancing conservative doctrine are Daggett, "An Oration 
on the Eleventh Anniversary of the Independence of the United States" (1787) 
and "Count the Cost" (1804); Timothy Dwight, "The Duty of Americans, at 
the Present Crisis" (1798)— all pamphlets; Seth Ames, ed., The Works of 
Fisher Ames (2 vols., 1854); Daniel Webster, "First Settlement in New England" 
(1820) in standard editions of his works. 

Abraham Bishop, a New Haven Jeffersonian, carried on a running political 
debate with Daggett is his "Oration on Connecticut Republicanism" (1800) and 
"Oration Delivered in Wallingford" (1 801)— both pamphlets. Frances Wright, 
a woman orator and crusader, attacked many cherished beliefs and institutions 
in her Course of Popular Lectures (1829). For speeches by Jacksonians, see 
Joseph Blau, ed., Social Theories of ]acksonian Democracy (1947). Relevant 
also are Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Man the Reformer" (1841) and "The Con- 
servative" (1841) in standard editions of his works; and Henry David Thoreau's 
lecture on "Civil Disobedience" (1849), now published as an essay in various 
collections of his works. 



Religious Liberalism vs. Orthodoxy 

Biographical works on Channing, which contain treatments of the controversy, 
are: Arthur W. Brown, Always Young for Liberty (1956); William H. Channing, 
Memoir of William Ellery Channing (3 vols., 1848). Elizabeth Peabody, Remi- 
iscences of Rev. Wm. Ellery Channing, D.D. (1880), concerns the years 
18 16-1842 and contains a number of Channing's letters. Chief source of informa- 
tion on Lyman Beecher is the Autobiography and Correspondence of Lyman 
Beecher, D.D., edited by Charles Beecher (2 vols., 1865). Popular essays on 
Beecher are to be found in Constance M. Rourke, Trumpets of Jubilee (1927), 
and Lyman Beecher Stowe, Saints, Sinners, and Beechers (1934). 

Representative accounts of the controversy are to be found in Joseph H. Allen 
and Richard Eddy, A History of the Unitarians and the Universalists in the U.S., 
American Church History Series (13 vols., 1894), X; Earl M. Wilbur, History of 
Unitarianism (1945); William W. Fenn, "How the Schism Came," Proceedings 
of the Unitarian Historical Society (1925), vol. I, Pt. I. A tract by Charles H. 
Lyttle, The Pentecost of American Unitarianism (1920), deals with the Balti- 
more Sermon; orthodox reaction to this sermon is found in Moses Stuart, Letters 
to the Rev. Wm. E. Channing (1819), and Leonard Woods, Letters to Unitarians 
(1822). Also useful in presenting orthodox views are James K. Morse, Jedidiah 
Morse (1939); and Sam W. Worcester, The Life and Labors of Rev. Samuel 
Worcester, D.D. (2 vols., 1852). 

Channing's major statements during the controversy are published in his 



NOTES ON SOURCES AND SUPPLEMENTARY READING 373 

Discourses, Reviews, and Miscellanies (1830); see the preface for his justification 
for entering the dispute. Theodore Parker, "The Transient and Permanent in 
Christianity" (1841), in a volume of his sermons bearing that title, reveals a 
later development of Unitarian ideas. Relevant also are speeches by Edwards, 
Channing, Emerson, and Parker in Joseph L. Blau, ed., American Philosophic 
Addresses, 1700-1900 (1946); and Timothy Dwight, Sermons (2 vols., 1828). 



The Essential Nature of the Constitution 

Charles M. Wiltse, John C, Calhoun (3 vols., 1 944-1 951), particularly vol. II; 
Claude M. Fuess, Daniel Webster (2 vols., 1930), I; Clement Eaton, Henry 
Clay and the Art of American Politics (1957). Consult W. N. Brigance, ed., 
A History and Criticism of American Public Address (2 vols., 1943) for Ernest 
J. Wrage, "Henry Clay"; Herbert Curry, "John C. Calhoun"; Wilbur S. Howell 
and Hoyt H. Hudson, "Daniel Webster/' 

For background, Frederic Bancroft, Calhoun and The South Carolina Nullifi- 
cation Movement (1928); Richard Hofstadter's essay on Calhoun in The Amer- 
ican Political Tradition (1948); Vernon L. Parrington, Main Currents in American 
Thought (3 vols., 1927), particularly sections on Calhoun and Webster with 
surrounding discussion. 

The Calhoun-Webster exchange, of February 1 5-16, 1833, while the high point 
in strictly constitution debate, was but one episode in a protracted controversy 
over sectionalism and the Union. Other key speeches in sequence are Calhoun, 
"On the Tariff Bill" (April 6, 18 16); Henry Clay, "On American Industry" 
(March 30-31, 1824); Daniel Webster, "The Tariff" (April 1-2, 1824); 
Webster, "Second Speech on the Tariff" (May 9, 1828); the Hayne-Webster 
debates (January 19-27, 1830); Clay, "Nullification and Other Topics" (August 
3, 1830); Calhoun, "States Rights" (February 26, 1833). For Clay, Calhoun, and 
Webster, the final struggle occurred in the debate over Clay's compromise resolu- 
tions in 1850. See appropriate volumes of the following sources: Calvin Colton, 
ed., The Works of Henry Clay (10 vols., 1904); Richard Cralle, ed., The Works 
of John C. Calhoun (6 vols., 1853); The Writings and Speeches of Daniel 
Webster (18 vols., 1903); Register of Debates in Congress; and Congressional 
Globe. 



A House Divided 

Ulrich B. Phillips, The Life of Robert Toombs (191 3); Russel B. Nye, William 
Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers (1955). Ralph Korngold, Two 
Friends of Man (1950) is a double biography of Garrison and Wendell Phillips. 
Benjamin P. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln (1952) and Carl Sandburg, Abraham 
Lincoln (1954) are fine one-volume studies. George Fort Milton, The Eve of 
Conflict: Stephen A. Douglas and the Needless War (1934), belongs to the 
school of historical revisionism. W. N. Brigance, ed., A History and Criticism 
of American Public Address (2 vols., 1943), has studies of speakers: Willard H. 
Yeager, "Wendell Phillips"; Rexford S. Mitchell, "William L. Yancey"; R. Elaine 



374 NOTES ON SOURCES AND SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

Pagel and Carl Dallinger, "Charles Sumner"; Mildred F. Berry, "Abraham 
Lincoln"; Earl Wiley, "Abraham Lincoln"; Forest L. Whan, "Stephen A. Douglas." 
Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (1948) has informative 
essays on Phillips, Calhoun, and Lincoln. 

Russel B. Nye, Fettered Freedom (1949) is fine on civil liberties and slavery. 
Gilbert H. Barnes, The Anti-Slavery Impulse (1933) puts abolitionism in a new 
context, though it may overcorrect older interpretations. See Harry V. Jaffa, "Ex- 
pediency and Morality in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates," The Anchor Review, 
no. 2 (1957) and Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln- 
Douglas Debates (1959). 

For speeches, see Calhoun, "On the Reception of Abolition Petitions" (February 
6, 1837) in Richard K. Crall6, ed., Speeches of John C. Calhoun (6 vols., 1853), 
II; Wendell Phillips, Speeches, Lectures, and Letters (1st ser., 1894)— particu- 
larly "The Murder of Lovejoy" (1837), "Public Opinion" (1852), "Philosophy 
of the Abolition Movement" (1853), and "Disunion" (1861); William H. 
Seward, "The Irrepressible Conflict" (1858) in Samuel Harding, ed., Select 
Orations Illustrating American History (1909). Paul Angle, Created Equal? 
(1958) is splendid for the Lincoln-Douglas debates and five preliminary speeches. 
Edwin Sparks, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1908) has texts and newspaper 
reports on the debates. Roy P. Basler and others, eds., The Collected Works of 
Abraham Lincoln (9 vols., 1953) supersedes earlier collections. 

Reconstruction of the Federal Union 

Radically different views of Stevens are found in Ralph Korngold, Thaddeus 
Stevens (1955) and Richard Current, Old Thad Stevens (1942). Raymond's 
journalistic career is traced in Augustus Maverick, Henry ]. Raymond and the 
New York Press (1870) and Ernest F. Brown, Raymond of the Times (1951). 
Information on his political activities may be found in several of the Stevens 
biographies and in W. H. Barnes, History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the 
United States (1868). 

For accounts of the Reconstruction period see Claude Bowers, The Tragic 
Era (1929) and George Fort Milton, The Age of Hate (1930). Paul H. Buck, 
The Road to Reunion, 1 865-1900 (1937) is particularly useful in tracing shifting 
sectional attitudes. James G. Blaine gives a vivid account of the Congressional 
debate in the second volume of his Twenty Years of Congress (2 vols., 1886). 

See Roy Basler, ed., Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings (1946) 
for Lincoln's last public address (1865). Johnson's Message to Congress (1865) 
and Stevens' speech of January 3, 1867, on the First Reconstruction Bill are 
reproduced in Samuel B. Harding, ed., Select Orations Illustrating American 
Political History (1909)- Also in Harding is Carl Schurz, "Plea For General Am- 
nesty" (1872). Lucius Q. C. Lamar, "Eulogy of Charles Sumner" (1874), is in 
Chauncey M. Depew, ed., The Library of Oratory (15 vols., 1902), X. Henry 
Grady's "The New South" (1886) is readily available in standard anthologies. 
A running debate on reconstruction measures may be followed in the Congressional 
Globe. Note especially speeches by Sumner, Stevens, Raymond, and Finck. 



NOTES ON SOURCES AND SUPPLEMENTARY READING 375 



Rugged Individualism and Social Protest 

Harris E. Starr, William Graham Sumner (1925); A. G. Keller, Reminiscences 
(Mainly Personal) of William Graham Sumner (1933). Maurice R. Davie, ed\, 
Sumner Today ( 1 940) suggests continuing interest in Sumner. Charles A. Barker, 
Henry George (1955). Daniel Aaron, Men of Good Hope (1951) has good 
essays on George and contemporary reformers. 

For background, see appropriate chapters in Richard Hofstadter, Social 
Darwinism in American Thought (1944); Ralph Gabriel, The Course of Ameri- 
can Democratic Thought (1940); Robert G. McCloskey, American Conservatism in 
the Age of Enterprise (1951). See standard works on agrarian and labor movements, 
particularly John Hicks, The Populist Revolt (1931). Robert G. Gunderson, 
"The Calamity Howlers," The Quarterly Journal of Speech, XXVI (1940), 
pp. 401-41 1 is good on populist orators. Finally, George's Progress and Poverty 
(1879), Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888), Henry Demarest Lloyd's 
Wealth Against Commonwealth (1894), and other writings of the period are 
invaluable. 

For a bibliography of Sumner's writings and speeches, see A. G. Keller, ed., 
The Forgotten Man and Other Essays (191 8). Seven of Henry George's addresses 
are included in "Our Land and Land Policy," in The Complete Wojks of Henry 
George (10 vols., 1 904-1 906), VIII. Edward Bellamy Speaks Again! (1937) has 
some of Bellamy's speeches on Nationalism. Eight of Henry Demarest Lloyd's 
speeches are in his Men the Workers (1909). 



The Gospel of Wealth vs. The Social Gospel 

There are no satisfactory biographies of Conwell or Herron. See the Dic- 
tionary of American Biography and Encyclopedia Americana for sketches. Useful 
bits of information may be winnowed from Agnes Burr, Russell H. Conwell and 
His Work (191 7), and Robert Shackleton, Acres of Diamonds (1915). The 
Shackleton biography contains an "Autobiographical Note" by Conwell and a text 
of the lecture. For an unfriendly treatment, see W. C. Crosby, "Acres of Dia- 
monds," The American Mercury, XIV (1928), pp. 1 04-1 13. 

The following books are valuable for men and background: Andrew Carnegie, 
Autobiography (1920); Ralph H. Gabriel, The Course of American Democratic 
Thought (1940), particularly chs. 13 and 24; Charles H. Hopkins, The Rise 
of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865-19 15 (1940); Henry F. 
May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America (1949); Eric F. Goldman, 
Rendezvous with Destiny (rev. ed., 1956); Irwin G. Wyllie, The Self-Made 
Man in America (1954); Robert G. McCloskey, American Conservatism in the 
Age of Enterprise (1951). 

See Maurice F. Tauber, "Russell Herman Conwell: A Bibliography" (1935). 
This is an extensive though incomplete mimeographed list of Conwell's sermons, 
lectures, and writings, as well as writings about Conwell, issued by Temple 
University library. Some of Herron's important speeches appear under the titles 



376 NOTES ON SOURCES AND SUPPLEMENTARY READING 

Between Caesar and Jesus (1893) and The Christian State (1895). The latter 
volume contains his highly controversial commencement oration given at the 
University of Nebraska. Representative of Washington Gladden's statements are 
his Working People and Their Employers (1876) and Social Salvation (1902). 
The foremost theologian of the Social Gospel Movement was Walter Rauschen- 
busch. Several of his lectures were published in elaborated form under the title, 
A Theology for the Social Gospel (191 8). 



Revealed Religion vs. the Religion of Humanity 

C. H. Cramer, Royal Boh (1952) is the best life of Ingersoll. There are no 
satisfactory biographies of Talmage; see, for example, Louis A. Banks, T. DeWitt 
Talmage: His Life and Work (1902) and a sketch in Clarence E. Macartney's 
Six Kings of the American Pulpit (1942). Consult W. N. Brigance, ed., A 
History and Criticism of American Public Address (2 vols., 1943) for Lionel 
Crocker, "Henry Ward Beecher"; W. M. Parrish and A. D. Huston, "Robert G. 
Ingersoll." See Marie Hochmuth, ed. A History and Criticism of American Public 
Address (1955), III, for Robert Huber, "Dwight L. Moody." 

For background, consult Washington Gladden, Who Wrote the Bible? (1891); 
Andrew D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology (2 vols., 
1896); Arthur M. Schlesinger, "A Critical Period in American Religion, 1875- 
1900," Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, LXIV (June, 1932); 
Bert J. Loewenberg, "Darwinism Comes to America, 1858-1900," Mississippi 
Valley Historical Review, XXVIII (December, 1941); Ralph Gabriel, The 
Course of American Democratic Thought (1940), especially chs. 14-16; Merle 
Curti, The Growth of American Thought (1943), especially chs. XXI-XXII. 

Ingersoll's best known lectures on religion and speeches on sundry subjects 
arranged for publication, are contained in The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, 
Dresden Edition (12 vols., 1900). Talmage's six sermons attacking Ingersoll 
and his beliefs are in The Brooklyn Tabernacle (1884). See also, Henry Ward 
Beecher, Evolution and Religion (1885). 

Crusade for the Ballot 

The best biographies of Miss Anthony are Ida Husted Harper, The Life 
and Work of Susan B. Anthony (3 vols., 1 898-1 908); and Katherine Anthony, 
Susan B. Anthony (1954). For a discussion of her speaking career see Doris 
Y. Twitchell, "Susan B. Anthony," in A History and Criticism of American 
Public Address, Marie K. Hochmuth, ed. (1955), III. Louise B. Hill, Joseph E. 
Brown and the Confederacy (1939), concerns the Civil War and Reconstruction 
periods, but contains nothing on Brown's Senate career. 

Nearly all chroniclers of the suffrage movement rely heavily upon the bulky 
History of Woman Suffrage (6 vols., 1 881-1922) prepared by E. C. Stanton, 
S. B. Anthony, M. J. Gage, and I. H. Harper. A clearer and less cluttered outline 
of the movement is presented in Woman Suffrage and Politics (1923) by C. C. 
Catt and N. R. Shuler. Useful also are Victory, How Women Won It (1940), 



NOTES ON SOURCES AND SUPPLEMENTARY READING 377 

a symposium published by the National Woman Suffrage Association; and Ida 
H. Harper, Story of the National Amendment for Woman Suffrage (191 9). 
Horace Bushnell, Woman Suffrage: the Reform Against Nature (1869) is a 
calm, detailed presentation of an opposing point of view. There are numerous 
autobiographies and biographies of woman suffrage leaders, particularly of Mrs. 
Stanton; see, for example, Alma Lutz, Created Equal (1940); Harriet Stanton 
Blatch and Theodore Stanton, Elizabeth Cady Stanton As Revealed in Her Letters, 
Diary, and Reminiscences (2 vols., 1922); and Mrs. Stanton's own Eighty 
Years and More (1898). 

Brown's Senate speech against woman suffrage is printed in part in History 
of Woman Suffrage (IV, pp. 93-100), together with a pointed and often 
amusing commentary provided by Stanton, Anthony, and Gage in footnotes and 
italicized passages. Frederick C. Hicks, ed., Famous Speeches By Eminent 
American Statesmen (1929) contains speeches by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Catt. 
See also Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis (3 vols., 1894), I, 
for several speeches on women's rights, and Wendell Phillips' lecture on "Woman's 
Rights" in his Speeches, Lectures, and Letters (2 vols., 1894), I. 

The Mission of America 

Claude G. Bowers, Beveridge and the Progressive Era (1932). Paxton Hibben, 
The Peerless Leader, William Jennings Bryan (1929); William J. Bryan and 
Mary B. Bryan, The Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan (1925). See essays on 
the speaking careers of Beveridge and Bryan by Herold T. Ross and Myron G. 
Phillips in William Norwood Brigance, ed., A History and Criticism of American 
Public Address (2 vols., 1943). 

For background see Julius W. Pratt, Expansionists of 1898 (1936); Walter 
Millis, The Martial Spirit (1931); Theodore P. Greene, ed., American Imperialism 
in 1898 (1955), Problems in American Civilization Series. See also appropriate 
sections in biographies by Bowers, Hibben, and others. 

See Warren C. Shaw, History of American Oratory (1928), pp. 570-579, 
for an excellent brief bibliography of speeches on imperialism. See also Speeches 
of William Jennings Bryan (2 vols., 1909); Albert Beveridge, The Meaning of 
the Times (1908), especially "Our Philippine Policy" (1900) and "The Star of 
Empire" (1900). Republic or Empire? The Philippine Question (1900) is a 
collection of speeches by prominent public figures. Other relevant speeches are: 
George Hoar, "The Filipino War" (1902) in Frederick C. Hicks, ed., Famous 
Speeches By Eminent American Statesmen (1929); Theodore Roosevelt, "The 
Strenuous Life" (1899) in The Strenuous Life (19 10); Carl Schurz, "The 
Policy of Imperialism" (1899) in T. B. Reed, ed., Modern Eloquence (15 vols., 
1903). 



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